Resurrection of Darkling Dream
by SqueamishAnchovies
Summary: Mima returns and brings the apocalypse. Three heroes fight to save Gensokyo before the dark consumes them all...
1. Prologue

It was winter, but there was no snow.

Bare brown trees rattled in the breeze beneath the hard gray sky.

Legs tucked under the_ kotatsu_, Reimu Hakurei sat inside her shrine, sipping steaming hot tea.

The changing seasons changed the shrine as well. Cold crept in through cracks in the walls. The roof leaked—if snow showed up, there would be trouble. Every time the floorboards creaked, something skittered underneath. Whether mice or rats or giant radioactive cockroaches, the pests had to go. And the carpet of leaves outside choked the space where her garden would grow in the spring. And...

_No. Enough __grouching__. Sit back and relax_.

Reimu tried. She sat back, even worked to relax a bit. Little came of it. She tasted her tea—still too hot. She waited for it to cool. And waited. Nothing happened while she waited.

Her mind wandered. Whenever it did that, she worried it might not come back.

Soon the New Year would arrive. Again, she'd receive a flood of visitors for the _hatsumode_. With the sudden seasonal resurgence of popular piety, donations flowed in like...like something that flowed in really fast. But Reimu's highest hopes would end like New Year's resolutions: unrealistic expectations would collide with harsh realities, and Reimu's wishes for more wishers would float off to join the cloud of other shattered dreams.

She jolted back into her body. _No. None of that. Focus. Think of tea._

Slurping another mouthful, Reimu burnt her tongue. That feeling fit with everything else—her chattering teeth, her arms prickling with gooseflesh, her feat sweaty and stinky under the table.

Not that she meant to gripe, but she had a lot to gripe about.

Reimu snuffled up the wet dregs of a Christmas cold, then guzzled scathing hot tea to wash the taste of phlegm from her mouth. It didn't work.

She heaved a heavy sigh. She tried to relax—she really did. But doing nothing failed to relax her. It made her lazy. And agitated. And being agitated but doing nothing about it put Reimu in the worst of moods.

Things fall apart—houses, bodies, expectations. Now Reimu sensed her sanity eroding more each passing day.

She glared at her half-empty teacup, still too hot to drink, as if willing the world to bend to her demands. The cup stayed the same. Plain stained porcelain, chipped around the rim.

It had been a bad morning too. She'd caught three fairy brats chucking snowballs at the trees in her yard. Where they got the snow, only the ice fairy would know. Reimu chased the brats away, throwing her _gohai_ and a few choice obscenities after the scampering scamps. Then she swept away the snow with a scrawny broom and plenty of grumbling. When she had been their size, Reimu ran the Hakurei Shrine. At six years old, she was already the owner of a Shinto shrine, heir to the Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs...and keeper of the worst job ever: keeping Gensokyo from destroying itself every other minute.

Reimu tried not to take her job too seriously. Tried. Hence the copious tea breaks.

Something hit the door with a _thunk_.

Reimu set down her cup, lips stretched into a tight smile.

_Thunk. Thunk-thunk. Thunkthunkthunk—_

She flew to the door and threw it open. A glistening wad of airborne slush smacked into her face. She stood there, seething, snowmelt dribbling down her chin, dripping on the tatami.

Cirno the ice fairy had cocked another shot, but even she froze when saw Reimu. Her two companions slunk behind her.

"It's the shrine maiden!"

"She's back!"

"Run away! Run away!"

Together they dashed into the naked forest.

Furious, Reimu spewed curses and a flood of crimson bullets from her hands. The balls of qi struck her trees with a sizzle, cooking the old wood and doing far more damage than a simple snowball. By the time Reimu realized this, the fairies had disappeared.

It had not occurred to Reimu that the fairies must be off from school on winter break, and thus extremely bored. The unfortunately tame weather deprived them of snow angels, snowmen, snow forts, snowball wars, and sledding. Small wonder they had to make their own fun. But none of this did occurred to Reimu.

"Damn kids," she muttered. For her, "fun" was something that happened to other people.

Dark was falling. Shivering, she settled back inside, chilly and damp, longing for a quick drink and a long nap. Aware of her limitations, she dumped sake into her tea. She sampled her concoction.

Ah. Perfect.

Something hit the door with a _thunk_.

Reimu slammed down her teacup. "I have _had _it with those fairies!"

She stomped toward the door, rolling up her sleeves to dish out the pain. Being the shrine maiden wasn't easy, but the line of work allowed for _some _righteous indignation.

She flung open the paper sliding door. "Now listen here, you—"

The blade of a sword flashed silver.

Reimu ducked and rolled. The sword sliced through the air with an audible _whap_.

A samurai woman, clad in a resplendent red-and-white kimono, strode into the shrine. She flourished her katana. "Reimu Hakurei!" she cried. "Your life belongs to me!"

"Who the hell are you and why are you in my house?" was what Reimu almost said, except she preferred to dodge, a course of action that prevented her head from detaching. Reimu retreated from the reception area into the tea room, her feet taking leave of the floor. She flitted around the ceiling, syaing, "Easy, I don't want to—"

"HIYA!"

Actually, she rather _did _want to hurt this rude guest, especially since the samurai had sliced the sliding door in two, then needlessly slashed the incense at the shrine to Reimu's ancestors.

Reimu slunk behind the heavy tea table and, when the samurai pursued, turned the tables on her opponent, _kotatsu_ and all.

Her teacup smashed.

The table split in a shower of splinters.

Reimu tripped and fell backward. The outstretched blade stabbed toward her—

A flying orb deflected the samurai's sword. The weapon flew out of her hand, clattered to the floor.

Reimu rose triumphant. The Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs whirled around her, black-and-white crystals the size of a paper lantern, or planets orbiting a very angry sun.

"You tried to kill me," Reimu said to the samurai. "Boy, that was dumb."

The samurai spat and snatched up the sword, swift as a snake. She lunged, plunged the sword into Reimu's heart...but Reimu wasn't there anymore. In a flash, the shrine maiden flitted to the other side of the room. From her hands she sprayed a storm of crimson.

Bright red bullets rained on the samurai, but she swung her sword to block them all. Not one shot hit her body. Steel glowing hot, the samurai sprang and stabbed.

The sword stopped a hand-span from Reimu's forehead, its blade clapped between the Yin-Yang Orbs. While the samurai struggled to wrench her weapon from the floating orbs, Reimu drifted closer. "Now, talk," said the shrine maiden with alarming tranquility. "You seem annoyingly familiar. Have I beaten you up before?"

"Have you forgotten?" the samurai hissed. "Outside Makai, many years ago!"

"Makai?" Reimu scratched her chin, probing her memory. "Nope, nothing. You got a name?"  
"One of our kind does not reveal one's name to quarry!"

"Ah. A career assassin. Well, Miss Assassin, consider your situation for a second, and kindly tell me again." She waited one second. "Now, who the hell are you?"

The samurai jutted out her jaw. "Meira. Of the clan whose land you stole!"

"Who, me?" Reimu was surprised.

"Indeed, shrine maiden! Whose ancestors do you believe lie buried beneath this building?"

"Uh, mine?"

"Exactly! No, no, _before_ that! Whose land do you think your predecessors stole to build a shrine? What disgraced clan lived over one hundred years resenting the house of Hakurei, and the atrocities they wrought? Who sought revenge yet suffered in poverty? Who is the sole heiress of that proud and noble house, sworn to the path of the sword, who even now seeks justice for the shame of her ancestors?!"

"These are rhetorical questions, right?"

Meira gritted her teeth, her face beet-red with rage.

Reimu allowed herself a half-smile. "Look, it's great to have this reunion, and I'm sorry for all this horrible stuff that's happened to you, but you can't hold me responsible for things that happened to your family fifty, a hundred years ago. I wasn't really around then. You'll have to take it up with the dead when you meet them. If you want, I can even introduce you." She hazarded a chuckle. "Hey, I understand. I lost my family too."

"You did?"

"I did. If only I could remember where I put those goddamn urns."

Meira gaped and gawked. "You call yourself a shrine maiden? You...your...you're a disgrace to the faith!"

"Am I? Hadn't noticed. Usually I don't mess around with faith. Lemme tell you, a little bit goes a long way."

"Impossible." Meira released her sword and sank to her knees. "I wait all these years to fight the heiress of Hakurei, yet I find her a her...her...here—"

"Go on. Say it. I won't get mad."

"_Heretic_!"

Reimu laughed. "Don't flatter me, kid. I wouldn't bother believing in the gods if I didn't have to deal with them on a daily basis."

Again, Meira struggled to extract her sword from the clutches of the Yin-Yang Orbs, while Reimu merely picked up the tea pot. "Cold. Dammit." So she went for the sake instead. "Oh well, tea's for old maids anyway. Want a drink?" She took a swig and nearly retched. "_That_'s the stuff!" A thought struck her. "Oh yeah! I remember you now! The weird samurai who asked me to marry him! Or her. Whichever it was. How could I ever forget that—"

"_YOU FOOL_."

A ghostly pallor fell over Meira, shrouding her in darkness. Eyes glazed, she jerked her sword from the Yin-Yang Orbs.

Reimu dropped the sake.

In an instant, Meira leaped across the room and held her sword to Reimu's throat. The Yin-Yang Orbs pinned the blade, but could not resist the samurai's sudden surge of strength.

A wave of pain washed over the samurai. She collapsed to a kneel, gasping, heaving. Reimu didn't move, the sword still at her neck.

A dark aura seeped from Meira's skin, surrounding her with a black cloud. Reimu saw the cloud take shape and grow a face. Green eyes, green hair. Grinning. Gloating.

"Hello, Shrine Maiden."

Those dulcet tones, high and cold, whispers from beyond the grave. Reimu shuddered. She'd know that voice anywhere.

"Mima."

The sorceress formed, smoky, pale. Tall hat, long cape. Despite her spirit form, her gaze was no less bright or sharp or cruel.

Mima examined her hands, merely puffs of smoke imbued with living shadow. Beneath the apparition, Meira's body twitched, staring straight ahead like a lifeless doll. "This host will not last long," said Mima. Her specter paced the room, glad of its newfound freedom. "She was so strong, and alone, and full of hate. So much negative emotion. All I had to do was feed it, and feed on it."

"No," said Reimu, staring in utter disbelief. She backed away. "You can't be here. You're _dead_."

"So?"

"You were sealed! Exiled! Banished from the lands of the living and the dead!"

"Oh yes, that. Troublesome trifles. There was this matter of a supposedly impenetrable barrier between me and the physical universe, but I found it didn't live up to expectations. Too bad. A few more millennia, and I might have started to enjoy the quiet of the abyssal planes."

"How did you get out?" Reimu breathed. Her eyes darted toward the door. _Keep her talking_, she told herself. _Keep talking, appeal to __her __vanity__, you know she likes that...then make a break for it_!

The paper door slid shut of its own accord.

Mima smiled a ghost of a smile.

"Impenetrable barriers aren't what they used to be," she continued. "I got out...because of you, actually. You, and your incessant meddling, have shifted the worlds more times than I can care to count. Haven't you sensed it? Walls, everywhere, everything breaking down. Outsiders in Gensokyo. Time repeating. Then one last lurch back to normalcy—that shift broke my cage, and I was free. So here I am, fresh out of hell, ready to raise hell here." She inhaled deeply, though her smoky body had no lungs. "Gensoyko. The shrine, my old haunt. I almost missed it."

Reimu edged away, conscious of Meira's dull glazed eyes following her. "What do you want?" she said loudly, to distract herself from her own mind-numbing terror.

Black tendrils snaked around Reimu's neck. From smoke, Mima formed beside the shrine maiden. Caressing her cheek, tracing her lips...throttling her throat.

"I want it all," Mima crooned in her ear, as Reimu choked. "I want revenge against the whole damned human race. I want everything you have, everything you ever took from me. I'm here to take it all back."

"No...you're not."

The Yin-Yang Orbs swung in from opposite directions—one clocked Meira in the head, while the other passed straight through Mima.

When the sword blade dropped, Reimu fired a red bolt—it rebounded off the samurai's blade, which swung at inhuman speed to guard Meira's face. Unable to touch Reimu herself, Mima moved her meat puppet with relentless vigor. Meira hacked and slashed, driving Reimu into a corner. Though the shrine maiden tried to fly, a sword through her thigh hindered her. Reimu collapsed, clutching the spurting hole in her leg.

The sword slide sideways under her chin, blade toward her throat. Reimu swallowed.

"Don't do this," Reimu said, like it would help. "Don't you realize what will happen when I'm gone?"

"Yes." Mima smiled. "The end of the world. Farewell to order, farewell to the border. Farewell to everything you know and cherish." The specter phased through Reimu—an eerie feeling, like icy water trickling down her back—and formed in front of her. So close Reimu could smell her fetid breath. "I've come to take over your dream. I am your worst nightmare."

"You don't scare me," Reimu spat. "Why, you don't even—"

She didn't finish.

Not before the sword finished slicing off her head.

Then the darkness took her.


	2. Stage 1-A: (The Grave)

The witch climbed the hill, wind whipping at her pointy black hat. Black clouds drifted in the sky, threatening a storm. Heedless of these omens, the witch persevered.

"Shame it has to be this way," she said, half to herself, half to the wilted flowers clutched in her fists. The blossoms had been beautiful once. So had a lot of things.

Spring had crept out of winter's shadow, manifesting in the buds swelling on the twigs. A few pathetic sprouts poked through the cracked hard-packed dirt, but the lingering chill had snuffed out even the least feeble flowers.

She hadn't heard a single songbird this spring. Only the whistle of wind, the brittle rattle of the trees, and stale stillness.

Little life remained in the land.

With a flurry of furtive glances, the witch slunk under the crooked cherry tree at the top of the hill. Its bare brown boughs bowed in the breeze, arms and fingers curled in the cold.

A stone sat under the cherry tree. Unmarked, unremarkable in every way. Wild onions had sprouted around it.

Marisa knelt before the grave to lay her offering. She weighted down the flowers so they wouldn't blow away.

"Well, Moo, here I am," she said. "Finally made it. I figured four months was long enough. Wait till you hear about all you've missed."

She dug in her pockets and drew out a jug of sake. Filling a dish, she placed it before the grave. The witch drank straight from the jug.

"You wanna know what happened when you went away?" She paused. "No, you don't. I'll tell you anyway." She sucked at the jug but winced at the taste. Thin, sour, but it was the best booze she could find anymore.

"After your de—disappearance, the walls broke down. The Hakurei Border, faithfully serving Gensokyo since 1885. Yeah, that didn't go over well. With the border gone, things came pouring in. _Things—_I don't even have words to describe them. Horrible creatures, abominations, the eyes of the abyss that gaze back into you. Yukari's pets. Whatever you call those things. Well, with you gone, they ran rampant. Killing and mauling every living thing in sight. Not even Yukari could control them, I'm damned if I know why. Some of us got together to fight back, humans and youkai and even a vampire or two. Not enough. _She_ was there first. Mima, the sorceress of twilight. Remember her? She remembers you, that's for sure. You're all she talked about as she slaughtered us. She's strong, stronger than she ever was. And I wasn't strong enough to stop her."

Heaving a heavy sigh, Marisa drank some more.

"Yeah, I ran away. Don't judge me. I'm not a hero like you, I never was. Then again, I'm also not dead. That's right, I'm only alive because I'm a coward." She stiffened. What came next was especially hard for her. "So...I guess I'm trying to say...well..."

She broke down. "I'm _sorry_," she croaked, voice cracking. "I'm sorry, sorry, so, so sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to take your place." Sniffling, she wiped her nose on her sleeve. "More than anything else, I'm sorry apologies are all I have to give."

Marisa bent down to touch her forehead to the grave. She hadn't cried once since she'd heard the shrine maiden died. Now would be the time to start.

"It's just...I never realized how much you _did_, how much you gave for us. How much we needed you. Still need you. You were our guardian, our guide. My...best friend..."

Here the sobbing began. Marisa dug her nails into her palms. Best get it out now, while no one was around to see.

"It gets worse. Shocking, huh? Yeah. There were those who had the _gall_ to follow _her_. They conspired with your murderer, the ungrateful swine. First they took over everything, then they took everything. My shop, my home, all I owned...gods, they took _Alice_!"

Marisa punched the ground. "How could you leave us? When we needed you most? Just go away and never come back? Never, never, never..."

The wind blew.

Finally, dabbing her eyes, Marisa set down her sake. "Sorry to bore you, Moo. I must look really stupid, talking to a rock. Saying things I could never say to your face." She chuckled despite herself. "Like it would actually bring you back."

She became quiet. There was nothing left to say.

Marisa stared at the ring of plants around the grave.

"Now if you don't mind, I haven't had a decent meal in ages."

With signature flourish, Marisa plucked up the wild onions and munched on the bulbs. The taste assaulted her senses all at once, a battering ram of flavor. Sour, strong, wild. "Just like you, Moo," she said aloud, eyes watering. From the onions—yes, definately the onions.

Marisa chewed in solemn silence.

When the weeds were gone and the moment felt over, she got up to go.

But someone was waiting for her.

The stranger wore a fancy floral kimono, a katana in her sash, and a fowl scowl directed at Marisa. Her headband read "Executioner" in bold blocky kanji.

"You!" the samurai said, pointing at Marisa. "What are you doing here? This is a _restricted_ area."

Marisa tensed. "Well, if it isn't Her Majesty's secret service. Hello, Meira. Only here to pay respects to an old dead friend. You know the one. What's the lapdog doing away from licking her master's feet?"

"You dog! You must be punished for your insolence!" Meira put a hand on her sword.

"Yeah," Marisa said, chuckling, "I get that from way too many people. I'd hear much better if I hadn't stopped my ears with industrial-grade insolence."

Meira recoiled as if she'd been struck. "You dare mock Her Majesty Mima's executioner?!"

"That was the idea, yup."

A glint of steel—Meira drew her blade. "Enough talk. Die, witch!"

The samurai sprang, slashing. Given the altitude advantage, Marisa fired a blaze of bullets from above. Meira dashed through the storm, zigzagging up the hill, blade flashing. The samurai hacked at the witch—Marisa swerved to dodge a sparkling slash. Marisa leaped. With a push of magic, she vaulted over Meira. The samurai followed the witch with her eyes, mouth open in awe. Not wasting a moment, Marisa blasted from overhead—"Master Spark!"

The bolt should have flattened her. Instead, it split on the edge of the samurai's sword. One divergent ray struck the gravestone—scorched stone shards pelted Meira.

Marisa seized the distraction. As she tumbled to the ground, she sprayed bursts of yellow bullets. The samurai swung her sword to block—too fast, too soon, she could never...

A flash of white devoured the shots.

Two round black-and-white crystals spun around Meira, shielding her. The Hakurei Yin Yang Orbs. The samurai smirked.

Marisa stared, sputtering incoherently. "You...you horrid little bitch," she whispered. "You took them? The Hakurei birthright, the blessing of the shrine's god?"

"By right, they belonged to _me_!" Meira hissed. The orbs whirling and swirling around her, she stalked toward the witch. "When my blessed blade pierced her rotten heart, the heirlooms of the house of Hakurei transferred to me—me, Meira, the rightful heiress! The orbs, the shrine, all mine." Sudden reverence swept over her. "And all that is mine belongs to Her Majesty Mima."

From a safe distance, Marisa surveyed her opponent. Sword, orbs, and self-righteous snobbery on her side. Glorious. And what did Marisa have? Pointy hat, tattered black dress. A handful of spells that had served her well till now. And...

Marisa gulped a swig from her jug of sake, while Meira scowled in obvious contempt. To spite her enemy, Marisa swallowed especially loudly.

"I had a master once," Marisa said, staring straight through Meira. "I loved her, lived for her. Every day, every breath. She taught me everything I know about magic. Everything I let her teach me, at least—I wasn't the world's best student. If I'd listened better, I'd probably be lots stronger. Oh well. Live and don't learn, that's me." She paused to drink again. "I wouldn't give up those years for everything. Not for the greatest lesson of all." She stared straight through Meira. "She taught me never to trust again.

"Let's see, how do I explain this to a neophyte? All right, I'll try. When my training was complete—that is, when I exausted her patience to teach me anything else—my master tried to enter me. She didn't have to use force. She could be so charming when she wanted to, and I was more than willing. But once I sensed her inside my body, I forced her out."

Marisa froze. "That came out wrong. She was an evil spirit, you see? And her twisted soul couldn't last inside me. I'm no paragon of virtue, but compared to her, I'm a kitten-kissing saint." She laughed, without a shred of mirth. "It's funny. It wasn't until years later, long after that charm wore off, I realized what life with her had been like. How she used me, abused me, tried to turn me into her. Funny how you make excuses for the abuse—she's just tired, she's been busy, or you've disappointed her somehow. You remember the good parts. Wish I'd had it that easy. Not me, sorry to say. I remember everything.

"After I left my master, I looked for love, but never found somebody worth trusting. So I looked some more. Truth be told, I acquired quite the reputation as a heartbreaker."

"Meira, I hope you're happy with her. I hope you trust her and no one else. Then, when she finally tires of you, tears you up, and tosses you aside, it'll hurt more than anything in the world."

Meira quaked with fury. She raised her sword. "You've said quite enough. Prepare to die, wretch!"

"They never listen," Marisa muttered.

When Meira charged, Marisa flung up the jug and shot it. Sake and shards of clay showered the samurai. Meira faltered—Marisa showered her with yellow bullets. But the Yin-Yang Orbs got in the way, stole the moment for Meira to recover.

The Yin-Yang Orbs shot out. One struck Marisa in the stomach, the other in the head. She blacked out for an instant, her brain rattling inside her skull. Then, screwing into a grin, Marisa seized one Yin-Yang Orb. It wriggled and struggled in her grasp—it even nearly pulled her off her feet—but Marisa held it fast.

As Meira's overhead slash swung down, Marisa blocked the sword with the captive orb. The edge glanced off the crystal. When Meira's and Marisa's eyes met, the instant seemed to last an eternity.

The other orb slammed into the small of Marisa's back. The witch gasped, her knees buckling.

Meira raised her sword...

With her opponent close enough to kiss, close enough to kill, Marisa whispered two fatal words. "Master Spark."

The beam slammed point-blank into the samurai's gut, blasting her backward. Meira struck the trunk of the cherry tree, cried out, and slunk down into a pathetic lump.

Then Marisa released the captive orb. It flew out and smacked its master in the face. The samurai slumped, nose dripping red, eyes swollen shut. Out cold.

There was no time to enjoy the victory. Marisa winced, back aching, head throbbing, stomach churning. She staggered as the world spun around her. Red sweat trickled into her eyes, blurring her vision. She licked blood off her lips.

All was stillness.

"Wasn't that exciting," she said, half to herself, half to the broken remnants of Reimu's memorial. "Looks like I beat up the big bad boss's henchman. Nice to know we won't have to worry about funeral arrangements, since they'll never find my body..."

Her words devolved into coughing. Her hand came away splattered with red. Those orbs hit harder than she thought. The Yin-Yang Orbs...with their master unconscious, they dissolved into thin air. "This bitch mocks your memory," Marisa murmured. "Just wait, Moo. I'll avenge you. Count on it."

A Yin-Yang Orb hit her in the head.

Marisa fell, reeling.

Trembling, Meira rose to her feet. Blood streamed from a broken nose and torn lip. Her eyes flamed with unspeakable rage. To Marisa's amazement, she still clutched the sword.

"Ingrate," Meira rasped. She clasped her sword in both hands. "Very well. It looks like now I—"

"WAAAUUUGGGHHH!"

A girl tumbled from the treetops and landed flat on Meira. The samurai crumpled, dashing her head on Reimu's headstone. She didn't move anymore.

Marisa blinked in disbelief.

"Oh, ow, ow, that hurt." The girl rose, rubbing her rump. She glanced behind her, where there was a feeble flutter of black feathers. "And I think I bent my wing."

Marisa briefly wondered if she were dreaming, or if she had died and this was hell. Neither option pleased her, and her aching body disqualified any alternatives. Welcome to unfortunate reality. She cleared her throat. "Hello, Aya. Nice of you to drop in."

The tengu brushed the dirt off her skirt. "That was a pun, wasn't it? How could you stoop so low?" She regarded the samurai she'd landed on, then out of habit reached into her shirt to extract her _Bunkachou_. "Who's _this_ nutjob?"

"Can't you read the headband? Probably not a person who gets invited to a lot of kiddie parties."

Aya laughed, high and sharp and shrill. Extremely irritating. She doodled in her notebook for no good reason. "Invitations! We reporters aren't the type to wait for invitations—we snoop where we feel we're needed, parties and war zones especially."

"Must be nice, to make a living off your worst impulses." Marisa pried the katana from the slumbering samurai. Mustering her strength, she lobbed the sword as far as she could. In her current state, that meant it stopped and plopped at the bottom of the hill. Ignoring what just happened, Marisa continued, "You still running off that rag of yours? Where _do_ you ever find subscribers anymore?"

Aya smirked, tapping her chin with her pen. "I have my ways." Apparently satisfied, she stuffed the _Bunkachou_ back into her white button-down shirt.

Marisa arched an eyebrow. "Really? Fascinating. That's not how I heard it. Stop me if you've heard this one—you publish propaganda for Mima's regime by day, while secretly printing dispatches for the resistance, right?"

Aya dropped her pen. "Where did you hear that?"

"I have my ways." The witch grinned, but it soon soured. "What are you going to do, turn me in to your dear leader? You don't have the guts. Whose side are you on, crow-girl?"

"No, no!" Aya cried, flustered. "You've got it all wrong! I'd never dream of that!" Awkwardly, she stooped to pick up her pen. "Besides, nobody knows where to find Mima. _She_ finds _you_, usually. And the only one who knows for sure is asleep right over there."

Meira didn't so much as stir.

To stave off a pounding headache, Marisa massaged her temples. "Uh-huh." She set her bloodshot gaze on the grave. "Funny how cowards live, and heroes die."

Aya nodded cheerfully. "No good deed goes unpunished!"

"There'll be trouble, once _her _people find out what we've done," Marisa murmured, staring at the samurai. Should they kill Meira to silence her? Or...

"Wait, what? Who said _we_? _I _was never here, for the record!" Aya stuck up her nose. "A reporter's duty is to become completely invisible!"

"Good reporters, anyhow. Well, you succeeded in failing, and falling on her. Good job." Marisa suddenly wrinkled her nose. "What were you doing up there? For the record?"

Aya broke out in cold sweat. She kneaded her skirt, brushed back her hair, shifted her eyes. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just...sitting there, in trees, the way birds do, you know? Tweet-tweet..."

Marisa snatched Aya by the black silk necktie. "Were you spying on me?"

"No, no!" Aya squeaked, waving her hands helplessly. "Whatever gave you that idea? Why would I do that? Never, never!"

Dubious, Marisa ventured a hand into Aya's shirt—the tengu squealed and squirmed—and the witch withdrew the _Bunkachou_. After flipping through pages and pages of illegible scrawl, Marisa tossed the book aside. She tightened the tengu's tie.

"Talk," she rumbled, patience exhausted along with the rest of her. "Who sent you?"

"I was after _her_."

Marisa stopped. She dropped Aya. "What?"

"_Her_," Aya gasped, massaging the breath back into her neck. She pointed a trembling finger to Meira. "I was tailing that stupid samurai. Her trail led here, but it was too hard to hide. I risked a close-up action shot—till a nasty fall broke my camera." She frowned. "In case you were wondering, when you mentioned Meira earlier, I was playing dumb."

"Didn't have to play too hard, did you?" Marisa propped up the unconscious samurai against the cherry tree. Meira's chest rose and fell. Still alive. Again, should they kill her? The thought of cold-blooded murder chilled Marisa's blood. Until she thought of that flashing blade piercing Reimu's heart.

Where was that sword?

Marisa went and picked it up.

Aya cried, "Wait!"

"For what?" Marisa snapped. "You going to tell me not to kill her, after all she's done?"

Aya shook her head vigorously. "No, no, by all means, continue. Do the world a service. Except..."

"What?"

The tengu chuckled awkwardly. "I was going to say, you should have killed her when you had the chance."

Marisa started. She jerked to look at the body, then at the sword. The sword and samurai dissolved into cherry blossoms, which fluttered away in the wind.

A thousand curses welled up in Marisa's mouth. She spoke none of them. Too weary even for anger, she turned on Aya. Just as the tengu had gotten her breath back, the witch yanked her tie again.

"Where does she go?" Marisa demanded, as Aya struggled and choked. "When she runs home to her master, where does she go? Tell me, and tell me now. I'm in a _really_ bad mood today. There's no telling what I might do. I've been meaning to try out this one spell that turns birds into frog soup..."

"The mountains!" Aya squeaked. "The mountains! Near Hakurei Shrine! I've tracked her there a couple times, but I always lose the trail! I think there's...ack!...I think there's something there. We could check it out."

Marisa let her down. As Aya gasped for breath, the witch brooded. "Show me," said Marisa. "Take me there."

Aya blinked. "Really? You want me to..."

"Yes, yes. Would I ask if it weren't important?"

"It might be dangerous."

"I don't care."

"Now's not the time to be a hero."

"I don't care!" Marisa snapped. "We'll bring the fight to them. I'm _through _with running." She grabbed Aya and marched down the hill.

I'll avenge you, Reimu. Count on it!


	3. Stage 1-B: (Moriya Shrine)

**A/N**: _Merriam-Webster defines, **to darkle**: 1) to appear dark; show indistinctly. 2) to grow dark, gloomy, etc. Killing off the heroine in the first chapter, depicting a world in decline, without justice or gods or heroes, this story might shape up to be the darkest work I've ever undertaken. And it won't get any brighter from here._

_Here's how it goes: Like a Windows game, there is a single story told through three parallel timelines. They do not interact or intersect, yet the stories complement one another in ways that may not seem immediately apparent. A heroine, a helper, and a mysterious benefactor further in the future. And thus commences the quest for Gensokyo's salvation..._

* * *

The gods were gone from Moriya Shrine.

Sanae Kochiya swept the cracked stone path. She would not speak for days at a time. She wore a shrine maiden's garb, and lived alone in the building behind the _torii_ gate, a place which could no longer could be called a shrine. Only an empty shell.

Burn marks marred the wood where they'd tried to smoke out the rebels Sanae was supposedly sheltering. Part of her house burned for no reason—no rebels hid in the shrine.

They were in the toolshed.

Sanae sighed. Unlike some, she'd chosen to surrender, rather than risk the destruction of her ancestral home. As the last of her line, she felt responsible. And paying tribute to keep her property, despite disadvantages, had its good points as well.

Such as the capacity to shelter rebels.

Face grim, Sanae looked up at the sky. A storm was forming, though when it would hit she could not tell.

The heavens had been mysteriously silent lately.

A chilly wind shivered through the scorched forest. Mima's ravagers burned that too, though it would regrow. For now, little remained but dust, ash, and blackened husks of trees.

Blowing on her hands to keep warm, Sanae decided against further sweeping and headed inside. Dinner by candlelight sounded nice. Every night, she put out a candle to signal a safe house for the rebels, but they had not shown up in weeks.

A season had passed since Sanae lost the most important person in her world.

"Reimu..."

"Hey you! Shrine Maiden!"

Sanae turned. At the gate at the base of the stone stairs, a samurai waved and waited. She strode up the stairs, swaying with the affected airs of the recently promoted. She whipped out a paper. "Do you see this?" she said. "Do you know what this means?"

Sanae might know if it were close enough to read.

The swaggering samurai handed over the document. "Read it and weep," she said. Sanae squinted—this person looked like the type who would enjoy making others cry. But Sanae vowed to deny her the satisfaction.

The shrine maiden took and scanned the paper. "This is a warrant for my arrest."

"Precisely," the samurai replied, smirking.

"But...I've done nothing wrong," Sanae said as calmly as she could. She folded the document and slipped it in her pocket. "I pay my dues, I quarter Her Majesty Mima's enforcers in my own house! What have I done to deserve this?"

Meira shrugged. "It matters not. Not to me. Now, if you would follow me, I shall not be forced to cut you up."

"Why force yourself? I'll go. Give me a minute."

Slowly, languidly, if in a dream, Sanae trudged back to her shrine. Impatient, the samurai tapped her sheathed sword on the walkway.

Sanae glanced back. "You're...Meira, aren't you? Mima's top enforcer?"

"Correct," replied the samurai, tossing her sword in the air. "And you shall refer to her as _Your Majesty_. She entrusts me to oversee matters in this world while she fulfills her vision." Meira narrowed her eyes. "What prompts you to ask, peasant? Does my nobility intimidate you? Does my reputation precede me? Surely you've heard of me, everybody's heard of me."

"Just wondering, actually."

If not her name, her ego was certainly known throughout the land.

Sanae knelt and reached under the loose floorboard.

"Are you quite finished, Shrine Maiden?"

"Oh yes. Quite."

"I'll only ask you one more time. Why do you ask my name?"

Sanae spun around, brandishing a _gohai_ with two fluttering _shide_. "I'd rather know your name before I send you to the gates of hell."

Strings of pure energy lashed from the _gohai_. Meira blocked the rippling strings with her sheathed sword—the sheath split apart, cut cleanly in pieces. With the strings wrapped around the blade, Meira yanked, snapping the lines of qi.

That's no ordinary sword, Sanae realized.

Heart pounding, Sanae whirled and twirled—the Dance of the Serpent God. More thin strings whipped out, flashing and slashing. Trees sliced in two, stones in pieces. Meira guarded with her sword, splitting the hair-thin strands on its edge. Scratches opened on her face and hands, but nothing deeper.

Sanae completed the Dance of the Serpent God, panting, sweating. She finished with a brilliant burst of bullets—rings shot out from waist level, demolishing waystones and stumps of trees. One, two, three volleys. But Meira was hardly grazed, and Sanae was getting dizzy.

After one last blast, a thunderous wave of blue qi, Sanae stopped.

The dust cleared...

There stood the samurai, shielded by two whirling black-and-white orbs.

Eyes dull and glazed, Meira looked up. "You done?"

Sanae's mouth hung open in disgust.

"Good. My turn."

Meira flicked her sword, then charged. The point thrust toward Sanae. The shrine maiden blocked...

She shouldn't have blocked with her _gohai_. It snapped like a twig, which it was.

Altering the course of her sword, Meira swung at Sanae. The shrine maiden ducked, then released a flurry of bullets at point-blank range. The Yin-Yang Orbs absorbed the shots, but out of instinct Meira retreated.

As the sword shrank back, the Yin-Yang Orbs shot out.

Sanae swerved to let the orbs fly by. She sprayed more bullets, and the Orbs wheeled around to guard their master.

The shrine maiden and the samurai stood at odds, cystal orbs whirring and whirling.

Meira cocked her sword, Sanae mustered qi.

Neither moved.

"Have you heard," Meira said suddenly, "what happened to the last shrine maiden I fought? You must have heard the story." The samurai chuckled. "She was so scared of me she pissed herself. She got on her knees and begged for her life. I can still picture her—tears streaming, snot running out of her nose into her mouth. Her face scrunched up in sheer fear. So hideous, I couldn't bear to look at her for long. I cleaved her head in two and threw the bloody body in a ditch." She laughed, as she must have laughed every time she told the story. Meira nodded to the Yin-Yang Orbs. "You might have known her. She gave me these."

Sanae's fists clenched. Enough.

She sprang, spraying, shouting.

Then the butt of the sword struck her square between the eyes.

Sanae fell flat on her back, head banging on the walkway. When her sight blinked back from the black, she saw the tip of a blade hovering over her chest.

"You shrine maidens are all the same," said Meira, scowling. "Weak. How did Her Majesty Mima ever lose to the likes of you?"

Sanae said nothing. She shut her eyes and prepared to die.

Suddenly the samurai screamed.

Something black and heavy slammed into Meira—her sword skirred on the stones.

When Sanae opened her eyes, a thick black tentacle snagged the samurai by the waist and snatched her away.

A dark shape, all glowing eyes and gnashing mouths and writhing tendrils, pulled Meira into the shadows. Drawing her _wakizashi_, the samurai hacked at the creeping tentacles, then at the stumps that spewed black goo. She stood fast, holding it at bay. Drenched in black blood, Meira plunged her blade into the abomination's flailing limbs—again, again. Then the blade was stuck fast. The black shape sucked the sword into itself, hilt, tassel, and all. Meira sagged. She sprinted away, with the creature in pursuit.

They disappeared into the dead forest.

"You can quit gaping now, Shrine Maiden."

Sanae lurched to her feet. "Who's there?"

A human form melted out of the shadows. Purple dress. Pink parasol. Flowing golden hair. A playful smile twisted on a shadowed face.

"Yukari," Sanae said breathlessly. "Would you mind telling me what just happened?"

The youkai of boundaries twirled her parasol. "Nothing," she replied. "Except I just saved your sorry skin." She glanced to the trail of ooze the creature left behind. "I simply flushed it from its cover at a convenient instance. Don't thank me for it. Ever." Her mood darkened. "My pets don't obey me anymore. It's as if they cannot hear my voice. But they do not harm me—it seems they remember their true master." She glanced down the forest. "Less than I can say for that samurai."

Sanae frowned. "Good riddance. I want nothing more to do with them, or her."

"Ah, _her_." Yukari inclined her head. "Her Majesty Mima's emissary. I trust you've been adequately acquainted."

"I pray she drowns in a putrid pit of her own excrement."

"My sentiments exactly."

Yukari approached, her cold blue eyes surveying the shrine. "Such a shame," she murmured. "To tarnish something so beautiful, so..._real_..."

Something roared as it soared by overhead. "What was that?" Sanae asked.

"Airplane. The breaches are getting worse."

Yukari scrutinized Sanae. "What's wrong?"  
"Where do I start?" Sanae shook herself. "It's over. My shrine is done. My gods are gone away, who knows where. And the love of my—" She caught herself before she said more than was necessary.

Yukari edged closer. "Your gods...what happened to them?"

Briefly Sanae wondered if she should trust Yukari. Not that she had anyone else. So she said, "Suwako, and Kanako. One night, out of nowhere, they just...vanished. Without reason or explanation. Gone. Just the day before the trouble started."  
"Yes," Yukari murmured. "Mima's rise."

They were silent for a spell.

"I've lost things as well," Yukari said. "Nearly all my power. With the border gone, I can no longer control the gaps. And with my power went those in my care—Ran, my sister. Chen." The flicker of sadness in her eyes almost seemed real. It disappeared, replaced with stern strength.

"Sanae Kochiya. Do you want to save this world?"

"Me?" Sanae blinked. "What are you..."

"Gensokyo is dying," said Yukari, gesturing to the land around her. Darkening skies, bare trees, dead leaves drifting in the breeze. "And it only holds together by a miracle."

"What are we supposed to do?" Sanae said. "I'm just a—no, I'm not even a shrine maiden anymore. I'm _nothing_. And you! You're powerless, you said so yourself."

Yukari loomed, glowering. A dark aura bloomed around her. "Do _not_...presume that I am powerless. I may not be able to warp reality, but my ability in battle is not to be doubted. Least of all by a mere mortal."

Sanae nodded vigorously. Few forgot how scary Yukari could be—Sanae was special that way. "Yes. Of course. Won't happen again, promise."

"Good." Yukari sashayed into the forest, casting a casual glance over her shoulder. Her lips moved with a grave pronouncement: "Do you want to find out where your gods have gone?" She extended a hand. "Follow me, and I will show you the mysteries of Gensokyo."

What could be done?

There was no choice.

Sanae took her hand.


	4. Stage 1-C: (The Bamboo Forest)

Tense silence smothered the bamboo forest.

Frowning at the world in general, Fujiwara no Mokou snuffed out the stub of a cigarette, then let another with a flame from her thumb.

The night was dark and dank, cold and quiet as the inside of a coffin. Not that Mokou would ever know—immortality had its perks, though she was hardly perky about the prospect.

Her lungs burned as she sucked at her cigarette. Tip glowing, gaze glowering, Mokou stared at the patch of charred sticks that was once a log cabin. A schoolhouse, actually.

_Keine. What have they done to you?_

To prevent her imagination from venturing into dark places, Mokou stuffed her fists in her pockets and sauntered on.

Mokou maundered down the beaten path, chewing on her cigarette. Over one winter, Mima's minions turned Genskyo on its head. No one was safe. Fortunately, Mokou lived to impress as few people as possible: she slept in trees, washed in rivers, ate little and lightly, and kept to herself, mostly.

Which made the next phase of her immortal existence even more inexplicable.

Mokou pinched out her latest cigarette and flicked away the stub. The flame was dead, barely a smoldering end, and the leaves were too damp to flare into a cheery blaze of wildfire. Her simple careless action posed no harm to anyone.

Not that everyone agreed.

"Excuse me. That's littering."

Mokou tossed a glance over her shoulder. She arched a thin white eyebrow. "What's that you say?"

A samurai swaggered down the forest path, hand on her sword, nose in the air. Mokou despised her instantly.

"Littering, in case you are too stupid to notice, is a crime," said the samurai, "which I consider punishable by death. You're polluting Her Majesty Mima's sacred forest." She flicked her thumb—an inch of her sword flashed. "Pick it up."

Mokou stared. "I _live _here."

"I care not. This is Her Majesty's forest. Pick it up."

"Then why doesn't your Majesty pick up her own litter?"

The samurai glared. "You have a death wish, vagrant?"

"A death wish?" Mokou smirked. "Maybe I do. Wanna find out?"

A furious scowl disfigured the samurai's face. "Insolent cur. Then you will not do as I command?"

"I see no reason to."

"Then, vagrant, you shall die. Littering may be a minor offense, regardless of my impassioned pleas to Her Majesty, but resisting an officer of the law merits capital punishment." The samurai whipped out her sword. "Prepare yourself!"

After nearly one thousand years of life, Mokou should not have been surprised that there were people willing to kill over littering. But she was. Somewhat.

Chuckling, Mokou folded her arms. She twisted her thumbs in her suspenders. "All right. Have it your way. I'm prepared."

The samurai's scowl deepened—an impressive feat. "What? Not going to grovel? Her Majesty is notoriously merciful when in the mood, though as her chief enforcer I am considerably less forgiving. I might be swayed with a little groveling."

"Not in the mood. Get on with it, will you?"

Slightly shaken, the samurai proceeded with her usual mode of attack. She brandished her sword some more. "You sure?"

Mokou spread her arms. "Hit me with your best shot."

"Don't you know who I am?" cried the samurai, with the desperation of one who really, truly, does not know herself. "Meira, the greatest swordsman in all the land!"

"I should care? You _look_ like a man, I'll give you that."

Meira gasped, then gritted her teeth ."Insolent cur. I'll spit you like a goose!"

"Before you pluck the speck out of my eye, why not take the plank out of your own ass."

Roaring wildly, Meira sprang and stabbed.

The sword plunged into Mokou's chest, directly between her breasts, piercing flesh and breaking bone. Her sternum shattered into a dozen jagged chunks. Red blood bloomed on Mokou's white shirt.

For a moment, all was still.

Mokou looked down on the samurai, barely blinking. "You stabbed me," she said flatly. "Is that all?"

The samurai's eyes bulged. Shaking, stammering, she struggled to dislodge the stuck sword, without any luck.

Mokou grasped the blade in her bare hands, unsmiling. Blood wept from the cuts on her palms. "Well. Anything to say for yourself? 'That's impossible!', or even 'Die, you monster! You don't belong in this world!'? Come on. I've heard it all. Impress me."

"An immortal," Mokou breathed, stumbling backward. "I...I never thought...you were...you were really real!"

Mokou nodded. Not bad. Could have been better. "Think so," she said. "Yep, I'm real, last I checked." Sword still sticking out of her lungs, Mokou lit a fire in her hands. Blood-red heat spread up the blade. "Any reason I shouldn't litter this place with smoking bits of samurai? I'm open to suggestions."

Meira sputtered and spluttered, but utterly lacked a coherent response. Mokou was ready to torch her. Then Meira leaped and grabbed the sword—planting a foot in Mokou's stomach, the samurai pushed off, yanking out the sword.

Genuine surprise lit up Mokou's eyes. She began, "Now wait, just a—"

Meira chopped off her head. It dropped with a plop.

The only sound left in the forest was Meira's labored breathing.

"Honestly," muttered Mokou's voice, "why does everyone seem to think that works? I blame the Scots. 'There can only be one.' Ha! I wish."

As Meira stared in horror, Mokou's head rolled back to reunite with her fallen body. Skin and sinew knitted back together, and the body rose whole and unharmed.

Mokou cracked her neck. "Anything else you'd care to try, samurai?"

Meira stuttered, "N-no, please, I never meant—" Backing away, she tripped over a bamboo root, then scuttled on her backside.

Mokou advanced, slowly, ponderously. She cornered the samurai amid a clump of bamboo.

"Any last words?" Mokou said. "Not that anyone's around to remember them, but it's the polite thing to ask."

"Yes."

A tad too late, Mokou noticed that Meira still held the sword. "You can come with me to hell!" The samurai charged again, blade outstretched and gleaming in the starlight.

Time slowed to a crawl...

Mokou blinked. It wasn't just her imagination. Time actually slowed—Meira stopped, mid-attack, fear and hatred frozen on her face. Mokou poked her to be sure it wasn't a dream. Nope, real.

Bolts of qi thundered into the floating body, shredding skin and spilling blood. Time unfroze, and Meira collapsed.

Mokou stared into the dark forest.

Oh gods. _Her _again.

"I had everything under control," Mokou said loudly, though her neck and chest still smarted. "You didn't have to do that."

"What? And deny you the pleasure of my company? I thought I'd save you another troublesome regeneration." A pink kimono fluttered in the darkness. "Besides, it's been a while...Momo."

"Not long enough, I'd say." Momo. The joke hadn't been funny five hundred years ago, and that had not changed. She loathed that nickname more than life itself. Almost as much as the one who gave it. "Step out into the light, so I can see that stupid smirk on your face."

"As you wish."

Black hair flowing, pale skin glowing in the moonlight, out of the shadows strode Kaguya Houraisen. The princess of the moon.

"You haven't changed," said Kaguya with a wan smile. "Still stubborn as a mule."

"Nor you," Mokou agreed, "still a total asshole."

Kaguya stepped lightly over Meira's body, giving it a coy "Did _I _do that?" expression. "Of course you realize," she said, "what we've done. It might mean war."

"Let it," Mokou sneered. "Let the mortals fight, with or without a reason. Just leave me out of it."

"Too late," said Kaguya. "You're already a part of it." She surveyed the forest, from the damp dirt to the browning bamboo to the thick pitch-black sky. "This world is collapsing. Can't you feel it? Aren't you the least bit curious why?"

Mokou shrugged. "Dunno. Always figured, not even the end of the world would get me away from you."

"Oh, you charmer." Kaguya smirked mirthlessly. But she spoke with deathly sobriety. "Not even we could survive what's coming. The entire fabric of reality is unraveling."

"I was never much of one for embroidery."

"You're so clever," Kaguya said, not kindly. Her black eyes blazed. "All your cleverness won't be worth dirt if there's not a world left behind." She held Mokou's gaze a long time, then choked out, "I need your h...h...he..."

"My what?"

"Your h...hell..."

Mokou waited patiently for the princess of the moon to further humiliate herself. As Kaguya struggled with her small but powerful phrase, Mokou peered past the princess at Meira, still face-down in the mud.

Suddenly, the samurai stirred. Trembling, twitching, she crawled toward her sword. Kaguya prattled on, but Mokou watched intently as Meira licked her bloodstained blade. At first the sight turned Mokou's stomach, but then she realized—_My immortal blood. Those wounds are healing_...

"What I'm trying to say is," Kaguya continued, but paused when a katana plunged through her heart. Meira twisted, then wrenched out the blade, with gasping, rasping breaths. Kaguya swayed but stayed upright. She gurgled deep in her chest.

Crazed with bloodlust, drunk on the kill, Meira smiled at her victory. She flourished her sword at Mokou, who remained nonchalant but nonplussed. Mokou nodded knowingly. Meira's smile fell.

A point-blank blast caught the samurai in the chest—Meira flew backward, crashing through a wall of bamboo. She landed on the forest floor, where she lay and stayed, moaning.

Wincing, Kaguya pulled out the sword and let her spine re-align. "That was totally unnecessary."

"Yep," was all Mokou said.

"Gods be good," Meira groaned, "how many of you _are_ there?!"

Rolling another cigarette, Mokou advanced on Kaguya. "Let me be clear," she said. "I want nothing more to do with you. It's over. Has been. End of the world or not, I never want to see your face again."

"Is that why you're loitering around where my house used to be?"

Mokou froze; the princess smiled. "Worried, were you?"

"Not a chance."

"No, of course not."

Kaguya clasped her hands in her baggy sleeves. She stared into the distance. "To assuage your concern, there is no Eientei to worry about. Not anymore. Burned to the ground by Mima's minions. They took my home, my servants, my friends..." She paused. "I heard there was one in her service who used flames. I thought...well, I was worried..."

"Don't even say it," Mokou interrupted, heat rising to her face. "You know better than that. I'm my own person, and I'll always be. Quit whining."

Kaguya breathed a sigh, with what might have been relief. "Gods be good, indeed."

There was rustling in the bamboo grove. The samurai moaned weakly.

"She just doesn't give up, does she?"

"Nope," Mokou admitted. "Can't fault her there."

Kaguya fidgeted, stealing glances at the samurai. "You want to..."

"Yeah, give me a minute."

Mokou summoned a raging flame, hot enough to incinerate the bamboo grove and all that was in it, with a minimum of shrieking. She sprayed the space with burning fire, yet was frankly impressed with the samurai's tenacity.

With another sigh, Kaguya flung the sword into the blazing inferno. The screams stopped, the flames extinguished. A sweet charred smell hung in the air, reminding Mokou why she became a vegetarian.

"Now why'd you have to go and do that? I had it all under control."

"You did _not_! Besides, you know I can't stand to see a dumb animal suffer." Kaguya twisted her braid in that sickeningly cute way of hers.

Mokou regarded her with suspicion. "What do you want, Kaguya? What is it you're looking for from me? I still plan to sorely disappoint you, but I'd rather know."

"Is it not obvious?" Kaguya straightened, her face solemn in the flickering firelight. "I want a truce."

"A truce?"

"Yes, that is what I just said. Glad you were listening."

"Why here? Why now?"  
"Why not?"

Mokou paced restlessly. "There's too much history between us, Kaguya, for you to think I'll cooperate quietly."

The princess smiled enigmatically. Mokou hated that look, more than anything else about her, because she could never guess what Kaguya was thinking. "Is that so?" Kaguya said behind that smile, without any commitment whatsoever. She slowed and stopped.

In fact, everything seemed to stop.

Mokou woke on her back, her shirt and pants shredded from countless strikes. How dare she...

Kaguya looked down on her, wearing that irritating smile. "Well? Change your mind?"

Growling, Mokou blasted a breath of fire. The flames reduced a cluster of bamboo to smoldering ashes, but without a princess. A glimpse of pink—Mokou whirled around. There stood the princess, waiting.

"How dare you manipulate time on me!" Mokou spat. "I ought to—"

When she blinked, she found herself lying on her belly, staring up at Kaguya's enigmatic smile. Most of Mokou's limbs here no longer attached.

"While you regenerate, let me explain," Kaguya continued. "I believe we can save this world. But I will need your help."

"You need more help than that, you psychotic b—ah!" Despite suffering multiple decapitations in her time, Mokou hardly savored the sensation of her shattered bones clicking back together.

"I am not finished," Kaguya admonished, scowling like a schoolmaster. She extended a hand. "Do we have a deal?"

Mokou didn't have to think very long. She spat on that hand. "Never in a million years."

Kaguya sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."

After the remnants of Mokou's face reassembled for the fifth time or so, only then did she choke, "I'll consider it."

Kaguya beamed. "I knew you'd eventually see things my way." She lifted Mokou to her feet.

Mokou brushed herself off, inspecting the tattered rags that were once her clothes. Immortality took its toll on a perfectly good wardrobe.

"Let's be off," Kaguya said, turning away down the path. "We don't have much time. I caught one of Mima's agents squatting in an old burned house. We ought to pay a visit."

"Yes, let's," Mokou said aloud, though her mind drifted elsewhere. Specifically, the back of Kaguya's head. Mokou squinted. One good fireball ought to do it...

The ball of fire glanced off a whirling crystal orb.

Kaguya spun around with an accusatory glare—Mokou raised her hands in an innocent gesture. Both stared in wonder at the patterned black-and-white orbs orbiting Kaguya.

Eyebrows raising, Mokou lit another cigarette. "That's new."

"What are they?" Kaguya whispered.

"Dunno, but they're freaking me out."

"I recognize them. The Yin-Yang Orbs. They used to belong to the shrine maiden."

"Can't you make them go away?"

"I will try."

Kaguya screwed up her face in concentration, and the orbiting orbs dissipated like smoke. As if they were never there.

"Too many strange happenings," said Kaguya.

"Agreed. Can we go now?"

They went.

Behind them, upright amid a smoldering heap of ashes, a samurai sword glinted in the warm sunrise.

* * *

**A/N: **_The last "heroes" appear, and the quest commences. Read, re-read, review, and new chapters next week. Cheers~_


	5. Stage 2-A: (The Magic Mountain)

"What exactly are we looking for, crow?"

"Not a clue."

Marisa rode sidesaddle on her broom, Aya gliding behind on dark wings, and surveyed the putrid mountain majesties above the looted plain. Rumpled ridges wrinkled the face of Gensokyo, scarred with rivulets and creekbeds, speckled with bare black trees like so many ingrown hair follicles. Beyond the mountains, a stinking pit yawned like a great rotten mouth—the hole in the world where Hakurei Shrine used to be.

"See anything?" Aya asked hopefully, not helpfully. The way she squirmed, she seemed eager to escape the company of this grouchy, gritchy witch. Not that Marisa would let her.

"No," the witch replied, frowning, "and that's even more suspicious." With uncanny grace, she alighted on the ashen slopes, amid the throng of dead dry trees. Aya flapped and flopped down after her.

"Wait!" Aya cried. "Where are you going? Do you even _know_?"

"I'm looking for Mima," Marisa said, "and about time—I've waited long enough."

Stumbling, tumbling, Aya caught up with the witch. She slid easily into Marisa's brisk walking pace. "Good," she said, "good for you. What then?"

"I blast a Master Spark between her eyes."

"Even better. Then what?"

"Then what, what?"

"Haven't we had enough semantic battles for one day?" Aya sighed. "What I mean is, say you take out the big bad Mima. Ding, dong, the bitch is dead. Which won't be easy, considering she's a spirit, technically already dead to begin with. But suppose you manage somehow. Then what's your plan? Please, let me in on the secret, 'cause I have no idea what the hell you think you're doing."

"It's simple, really," Marisa replied, teeth clenched, gaze set ahead. "I kill her. Or annihilate her, or whatever. After that, I don't care what happens to me." (Aya interrupted, "What about m—", but Marisa interrupted her in turn.) "Her inexplicably loyal minions can take me out, or I can waste away with everyone else when this world rots and dies." ("Geez, have you always been this morbid?" Aya asked, knowing she'd be ignored and summarily interrupted, which she was.) "I don't care," Marisa continued. "If someone must suffer for all that's happened, it might as well be the one responsible." She met Aya's eyes. "That's all."

Aya thought as she walked. "Your recklessness is almost inspiring," she finally said.

"Heroic, even?"

"I'd say so."

"That's what I was afraid of." Marisa sighed huskily. "The minute we turn into heroes, we're doomed."

"Look," Aya said, with the subtly superior tone of a seasoned advice columnist, "you keep saying you're no hero, but I don't believe a word of it. How many times have you saved the world already?"

"A couple. One too few."

Aya winced but persisted. "Well, I mean, just look for you. Out on a quest for justice, driven by revenge, armed with naught but your wits and sheer pluck? Classic hero material."

"Don't forget the annoying sidekick."

"The annoying—yes, exactly. I was going to add the obligatory 'blonde hair, blue eyes,' but that works too."

Marisa paused before speaking again. "Sorry, false advertising," she said. "I'm no hero. Besides..." She glanced back over her shoulder, down to the smoking crater that was once Hakurei Shrine—"the last hero left Gensokyo some time ago."

Sensing a sore subject, Aya clamped her mouth shut. Journalistic instinct told her when she could extract nothing more from an interview. Instead, she thumbed through her Bunkachou, where she jotted snippets as they flitted into her mind, or scribbled witty one-liners she'd save for later. Today, when linguistic acrobatics should have flipped and vaulted in the never-ending circus of her agile brain, the words wilted on the end of her pen. Nothing.

They walked in silence, until...

"Where you talking about the shrine maiden?"

Aya salvaged the conversation, lamely.

Marisa took the awkwardness in stride. "Who else did we turn to when things got rough and tough? Me? _You_? Gods, no, never. Not Sanae, or even Yukari."

"Hmm." Aya chewed her lip. She risked the question: "Was Reimu really that important? What makes—sorry, _made_ her so special?"

"You must not have known her, to ask that," Marisa said. "She never lost a battle."

"Ah, I get it. Keeping the peace through force, eh?"

"Unless it was against sake. Then she lost every time. She loved to drink."

"I see. She beat the battle, but not the bottle. Fascinating, I'll have to write that down." She did. "Are you saying we're here on _her_ behalf? We're here on behalf of a drunk, a carouser, a known rabble-rouser..."

"She was a human being as well as a hero."

"Aha."

Marisa sounded tired of questions. Thanks to the good ole instinct, Aya knew she was fine for a few more.

"I understand you two fought on different sides on multiple occasions. During the imperishable night, for one, and in that nasty scuffle over the broken border. Does that make you a villain?"

"Not at all. Let me explain." Marisa took a deep breath. "Being a hero isn't about sides, or even what you're fighting for. Well, it helps to be in the right, _not_ stomping baby bunnies, but that's not the point. Heroes fight for what they believe in, with courage, strength, selfless abandon. They work to make life better for other people, rather than making life easier for themselves. Reimu was...a special kind of person. She'd give you the shirt off her back, and the skin with it—not because you asked, in which case she'd tell you to get lost and get a job, you freeloader...but she'd help the ones who really needed it. Sure, she'd still complain, but nobody's perfect."

Aya nodded. "I think I see what you mean." Not that she did see, or even think.

"Yeah," Marisa went on, just when Aya thought she'd shut up, "Reimu was the properly improper kind of hero. And look where that got her—dead and buried in an unmarked grave." Marisa groped for her flask, only to curse and remember she'd shot it to pieces.

Aya became quiet. Actually, she remained quiet for quite a while.

The path slanted upward, higher toward the mountains. Twin mountains, in fact; the path wound up between them. Aya shuddered. A passage from her memory meandered to her lips: " Two pale white peaks," she murmured, "twin mountains shrouded in milky mist..."

"—like the gossamer strands of a forgotten bridal veil."

Aya froze. Marisa froze.

They stared at each other as they slowly realized what had just happened.

"You know those books," Aya said, eyes wide.

"_You_ know those books?" Marisa repeated, incredulous. She wheeled around and took Aya by the shoulders, shaking her. Aya looked rather shaken indeed, and Marisa was also shaking with sheer joy. "_My Slice of Paradise_,third book in the Baroness of Verona tetralogy! In the last ten years, I haven't met a single person who's _heard_ of the series, let alone read it! How do you know it? Tell me, tell me!"

Aya still stared. She paled. "How do _you_ know it? You remember it?"

"Remember it?" Marisa laughed. "I remember every ink stain, every smudged fingerprint, every dog-eared page on my bootleg paperback! That quote was from page 228 of the revised third edition, falsely numbered 226 in the previous printing. Am I right?"

"You remember it," Aya repeated, utterly petrified. "Oh gods, you remember it. _Someone_ remembers it..."

"Of course!" Marisa said. Awash with pleasure, she faded back to a lost era of sultry summer afternoons, grass-stained knees, and a shady spot by the creek. "I read every single one of those books as a little girl. E_verything _the author wrote. Over and over. How could I not remember?"

"You did?" Aya squeaked. "All 108?"

"There were that many? Yikes. So I missed three. Tell my jubilant younger self, she'll be ecstatic." Marisa eyed Aya, noticing the latter's apprehension. "You..._did _read them, right?"

Aya swallowed. She started to speak, but swallowed again. "Read them?" She slipped out a weary smile. "I _wrote_ them."

Marisa's mouth dropped open. Aya could hear her integrity crumble.

"No...way."

Marisa jumped around, gleeful as a little girl. "That's a amazing! I mean, _you're _amazing. You—I mean, you—no, don't say anything. I can't ruin this moment." She clasped her hands to her chest and nearly swooned. Aya simply scratched her head.

"You're Elmyra Corvin," Marisa said, just to be certain. When Aya nodded reluctantly, the witch squealed with glee. "I can't tell you," she said breathlessly, "how much your books meant to me! Growing up. Even now, I think of them from time to time. All right, I confess, I never outgrew it. Your stuff litters my coffee table, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, toolshed, everywhere you can think of. Of _course_ I remember it! I can still picture Baroness Bernardine Buxom, when she was stolen away by the nefarious pirate captain Brady Barrelchest. How Bernardine heaved mightily when Jesse swore to make a woman out of her..."

Aya developed the queasy yellow expression authors get when their words and work get unexpectedly thrown back at them. She pleaded, "Please, no more..."

Marisa prattled on, "My _other_ favorite was the priestess Helen of Callipygia, sworn to solemn celibacy till her dying day. Or at least until a dashing soldier ensnared her gaze on the day of the great goat sacrifice. And that night..."

"Yes, yes," said Aya hastily, "glad you enjoyed it." She groaned inwardly and rubbed her eyes. "I can't believe it. People actually read that filth..."

"I know I did," said Marisa, sporting her characteristic smirk. "I lapped it up like warm, creamy vanilla custard."

The comparison did little to lift Aya's sunken spirits. "I was broke," she croaked, by way of apology. "I dashed off a couple cheesy pulp novels to pad my pockets, only 'a couple' grew into a hundred and more." Aya groaned again, tearing at her hair. She stared bleakly at Marisa. "I've always dreaded the day I'd meet the slobbering degenerates who actually bought my books."

"Bought, sometimes," Marisa replied, grinning. "And borrowed. Also nicked, nabbed, pinched, pilfered, or filched. When I was small, no bookshelf was safe. Somehow or another, nearly every installment found its way into my loving clutches."

"I can't believe it," Aya repeated, "I still can't believe it."

"Nor I," Marisa repeated, with considerably more verve.

"No," Aya said. "I never thought...I never thought _children_ would get their grubby grabby paws on what I wrote!"

"This one did," Marisa replied. "It shaped me for a lifetime." (That horrified Aya most of all.) "If you aren't sick of my gushing, my role model was Arietta la Snatch, princess of thieves. How she'd steal girls the night before their wedding, to save them from grooms they didn't love. How the stolen brides joined her troupe of marauding minstrels and rapscallions? Brilliant, just brilliant. Such love, such courage." Marisa trailed off. "She was...my hero."

For a brief moment, neither one said anything.

Then they heard the tapping sound.

"What's that?" Marisa said. The question relieved Aya, who'd heard the annoying noise for some time now, yet was too embarrassed to ask.

Aya pointed dead ahead. "There."

A child wandered in the woods, banging a branch on the tree trunks, mouth puckered to make whooshing and slashing sounds. Blonde hair, black dress, bright eyes. She almost looked like—

"Look, Marisa, it's a little you!" Aya said, stealing a nervous laugh. But Marisa looked deadly serious.

"Of course," the witch murmured. "It _has_ to be this way."

She stalked toward the short stranger.

"You," Marisa called, even as she approached the girl, legs pumping, feet crunching in the leaves. "Yes, you. Whoever you are, and why can't I think of your name..."

The girl blinked blankly. Her too-wide eyes stretched and glittered. "Mari!" Screaming in delight, she dashed toward Marisa and snuggled her face in the witch's belly. "It is you, it _is_ you!" She giggled, nuzzling Marisa. "You know me, silly! I'm _Ellen_!"

"Ellen," Marisa said. A hand settled on the little girl's head, patting her. But Marisa grew distant, pale, paralyzed by a nameless dread. "Yes. How could I forget you..."

"You didn't! You only thought you did."

Exuberant, little Ellen danced and pranced around the path, humming a jaunty tune off-key. "But now I've found you again!" She smiled again, and again she wrapped her arms around Marisa's waist. "And I'll never let you go!"

"What's going on?" Vaguely concerned, Aya crept toward them.

Standing beside Marisa, Ellen loudly proclaimed, "I'm Marisa's buddy!" Her chest swelled with pride, though not with much else.

Aya gibbered, "So, how did you, uh..."

"We grew up together!" Ellen said, smile blindingly bright.

"We did," Marisa agreed, nodding. Then, quietly, "Or, one of us did."

Ellen shot Marisa a troubled, puzzled look. "Eh? Come on! I used to be _lots_ taller than you. How'd you get so _big_?! And check out your _chest_!"

When Ellen went for a playful squeeze, Marisa, for the first time in her life, turned away from a girl's touch.

"What's wrong?" Ellen said, lost, confused. "Aren't you my Mari?"

"Yes," Marisa said solemnly—"yes, I am your Mari, only grown. And you're still the same little Ellen I've always known."

The girl giggled. "That's great! We can run away and play in the fields and pick wildflowers like we always do, right Mari? Mari?"

With a sad smile, Marisa patted Ellen's head. "Child," she said, "there are no more wildflowers in the fields."

"Oh," said the girl, but she brightened immediately. "We can _pretend_ there are wildflowers, and we'll_ pretend _to pick them! That sounds fun, doesn't it? Doesn't it, Mari?"

"Ellen," Marisa said softly, "what are you doing here?"

Ellen used the branch in her hand to scratch her back. "Oh, here?" She stole a furtive glance to her right, then her left, then she whispered, "Don't tell anybody, but...I'm on _petrol_. It's a secret, nobody can know—not even me!"

"Petrol," Marisa repeated. "You mean, patrol? You're guarding something?"  
Ellen bobbed her head. "Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, that's it! You wanna see it? It's really awesome! Um...so you wanna see it?"

"I do." Marisa shared a meaningful glance with Aya. They grimaced grimly.

Ellen beamed. "Okay! Let's go~!" She stepped up the steep path, swinging her stick like a sword, buzzing her lips like a trumpet player.

While Ellen marched ahead, Aya lingered back with Marisa, outside Ellen's earshot. "What's with this kid?" Aya whispered. "I've been around this area plenty of times, but I've never seen her!"

"She didn't want you to see her." Marisa spoke with deadly seriousness.

The witch looked so scared, it almost spooked Aya. "Who is she?"

"The strongest witch I've ever known."

Aya didn't expect that. She nearly choked on her own spittle.

The witch went on, "Or she must have been, before she was trapped in the mind and body of a six-year-old child. Forever."

Aya chuckled nervously. "Well, if not the strongest, she's certainly the _strangest_ witch I've ever met, and that's significant. No offense."

"None taken."

Soon their impossibly adorable escort noticed her guests were trailing behind.

"What's the matter?" Ellen called, singsong. "Can't you keep up? The cave's just ahead!"

Aya's curiosity piqued. "Cave?"

And suddenly there it loomed, huge and black and ominous, a gaping view straight into the mountain's dark heart.

Marisa and Aya stared, while their guide giggled incessantly.

"Ellen," Marisa said quietly, "do you know what this is?"

The little witch nodded yet again. "Sure do! It's a portal to Makai, isn't it? Her Majesty Mima gave me specific instructions not to let anybody get too close. Or else she said I'd have to kill them." She stopped. "Oh. I brought you here, didn't I. Oops. Bad me. Does that mean I have to..."

Marisa grabbed Aya's arm—the witch's palms were slick with sweat.

"Her Majesty...?" Aya repeated, only now grasping the implications.

Like a puppet with half its strings snipped, Marisa staggered toward Ellen. Marisa tousled her hair, pinched her cheeks, much to the little witch's delight. "Now I understand," Marisa murmured. "You're my replacement. After I left, she filled my place with...you. Gods, how pathetic. You even _look_ like me..."

Ellen cocked her head. "Mari? Are you crying?" She put her hand on Marisa's chest. "Where does it hurt? Tell me, tell Ellen, I can make it all better!" She backed away, and was overcome with a troubling unchildlike grin. "I can make all the pain go away. All I need...is a wave of my magic wand."

She took up her stick, a crooked maple twig as thick as her thumb, a strip of wood with no magical properties whatsoever.

"Master taught me things," Ellen said, advancing on Marisa. "Good things, bad things. Ways to make people hurt, or make the hurt stop forever and ever." Cinders of solid light sizzled from the tip of the stick. Sparking, sparkling, crackling to the ground.

"No," Marisa said, calm but controlled. "No, Ellen, I'm fine, thank you."

"But...Her Majesty said..."

"Never mind anything _Her Majesty _said." Even to a child, Marisa spat out the title like bitter poison.

"She mentioned you."

That stunned Marisa. "What did she say?"

Ellen teetered on the verge of tears. She shook her head. "Bad things. Things you couldn't have done. I'm so sorry. I can't be good to you and be good to Her Majesty too. I'm so, so, so sorry, Mari."

"Whatever Her Majesty wants, Her Majesty gets. I understand. More than you know." Marisa turned to Aya. "There was a time I worshiped her too, once. Before I saw her true face. That's the problem with heroes. The ideals aren't real, like the characters in your books; the true heroes suffer and die for doing what's right, like Reimu; or, worst, they stay long enough for you to realize the horrors of who they are." She wiped away a tear. It glistened on her finger.

"I can say hello to her, if you'd like," said Ellen, trying to smile, to get Marisa to smile. "She wants to see you again. That's what she said to me."

Marisa squeezed Aya's arm. The signal.

They fled into the cave.

A burst of bullets flustered Ellen enough for them to rush past her—Marisa saw to that. Aya ran for dear life, not to be left behind.

As they plunged into the dark cold cave, Aya heard Ellen cry, "Wait! Come back! Where are you going? I don't wanna hurt you, just kill you a little! Come back! Please, come back! Mari! Mari?" Ellen's voice grew distant, broken u[ by sobs. "Please...don't leave me all alone again...please..."

A beam of light pierced the darkness, a bolt from Ellen's wand. Then another, then another, and all light faded away.

Eventually, Ellen's voice faded too.

"Hang on to me," Marisa said tightly. "The transition can be...how do I put this gently..."

Aya clung to the witch, even if it was the last thing she wanted to do. She convinced herself she had no choice. She almost believed herself.

Into the darkness, one step after another...

Then light bloomed around them, as a new world opened up like a latent bud blossoming into a late flower.

* * *

**A/N:** _And so, s__elf-imposed deadlines whoosh by with the rest of our summer days. Lots of chatting this chapter, isn't there? Not apologizing. Looks like we've learned three things: one, Marisa grew up reading slutty, smutty, bodice-ripping romantic tripe; two, major traits from her adult personality (i.e. kleptomania, nymphomania) can be attributed to this purely fictional background; and three, that there are always three items in an ordered list, and no matter how stupid the first two are, the third must try to top the others. (Oh, and "heroes" are full of it.)_

_See y'all next chapter. Cheers~_


	6. Stage 2-B: (The Gate)

At twilight, cold darkness seeped into the evening sky, overshadowed the forest, and gnawed away Sanae's patience.

"Where are you taking me, Yukari?" she asked, not for the first time. The shrine maiden walked after the youkai of boundaries, who had hardly said a word.

"You'll see," Yukari replied. Two words—she was getting chatty.

Sanae persisted, "You promised to show me where my gods have gone."

"That I did," Yukari said. "But I never agreed to tell you outright."

Sanae ground her teeth. Some folks lived to make other people's lives difficult. It aggravated her how many of those people she knew.

In fact, this whole situation aggravated her. Yukari, the most powerful (known) entity in Gensokyo, led her, baited _her—_the last keeper of Moriya Shrine—down a dark road to somewhere, maybe something promising, maybe a wild goose chase. Maybe there weren't even any wild geese worth catching.

More than once, Sanae considered running off. The shady paths branching away from the main road seemed especially tempting. But where could Sanae go? Not home—she'd sealed her doom, attacking Mima's emissary. Her Majesty's enforcers would take exquisite care in destroying everything Sanae had ever loved. Only forward. She could only move forward with this mysterious, oddly overdressed stranger.

Not that Sanae would go without a fight.

"What do you_ want_, Yukari?" Sanae said, glad for noise other than her steps crunching on crisp dead leaves. "I doubt you called on me for the company. What are you really after?"

"Your company." Yukari arched an eyebrow at Sanae. "That is, the presence of a shrine maiden might avert certain future events."

"Such as?" Sanae said, a trifle testily.

"The total destruction of Gensokyo."

Ah. That option again. Should Sanae have been surprised? She wasn't. Still, she was shocked that Yukari could muster a rational reason for anything she did.

"Oh. Total destruction. That's all? All right, here we go again. When's it going to happen? How long do we have?"

"At best? Hours."

That answer actually stunned Sanae, so much she stopped walking. "Hours?" she repeated. "But...what...how—"

"There are forces at work greater than a simple shrine maiden can understand," Yukari said, eyes slimming. "Though I tried to warn a more important shrine maiden, she refused to heed me. Again, as usual. Perhaps that led to her undoing."

Sanae's skin itched. Even now, she burned with rage when someone dared insult..._her_. Sanae could hardly think the name without a rush of crushing grief. "She," Sanae said slowly, "was a greater person than you or I will ever be."

"The greatest fool, you mean." Yukari smiled thinly. "What? You expect me to ignore Reimu Hakurei's flaws? Her staggering stupidity is but one example. Oh, don't look at me that way. You knew her almost as well as I do."

"I was her friend," Sanae snapped. "Her _closest_ friend. Are you implying that you were, too?"

Yukari shrugged. "Me? No. I never engage in that sort of base behavior. I was merely her mentor—her guide, her guardian. It was my place to give good advice, then be horribly ignored while she went to do whatever reckless, feckless feats popped into her little rock-hard head." The smile never wavered. "Why so angry? You said the same sort of slights, only to her face, while she still lived. For the reasons I've enumerated, you left her. Why did you wait till Reimu Hakurei was dead to boost her image?" A wry glint entered her eye.

"Shut up, you old bag!"—Sanae almost said it, but bit her tongue. She stormed past Yukari, avoiding her cool gaze. The youkai of boundaries calmly followed, on the road to...wherever they were going.

"Reimu Hakurei was no demon," Yukari said finally, "but neither was she the paragon of virtue the rebels remember her as. She was simply—and ultimately—a human being." And they said nothing more on the matter.

As the daylight subsided and night encroached, Sanae relaxed her pace. Yukari pressed on, her bright eyes designed for the dark, or worse.

Sanae asked again, "Where are you taking me?"

"To see your gods. Isn't that what you want?"  
"Yes, but..." Sanae wasn't sure how to protest, how to put her nameless apprehension into words. "If something terrible has happened to them, I'm not sure I want to. I mean, gods, people don't just disap—"

"Sanae." Yukari's voice was low and cold. "Unless we go, something worse will happen to them, to us, to everyone. Only we'll never know it happened." She paused meaningfully. "Unless you wamt to expand that void that seems to occupy the space inside your brain, I suggest you shut up, hurry up, and most of all, and keep up." Yukari glanced up. "Besides, we're here."

Sanae crunched to a halt. Suddenly, there it was. Bright light flooded the forest, spilling through the stark trees, washing over the meandering trails. Drowning Sanae's courage.

A chain-link fence sliced through a thick swath of forest, a jagged gray line topped by coils of razor wire. Stripped of bark and branches, felled trees sprawled in haphazard heaps at the base of the hill. A hulking building loomed on the hilltop, its windows glowing. Spotlights shone on the hideous edifice, polluting an otherwise good and gentle night.

"Here we are," Yukari said. "Beautiful, is it not? Welcome to the Not-So-Secret Lab."

Sanae stared in horror. "What...the hell...? How long has this been here?"

"Too long. Now we should get moving, before—"

A rattle and clank of machinery. A spotlight flashed—Sanae shielded her face.

Out of the light oozed a voice. "Hey. You there. Why you here?"

"Excellent," Yukari muttered. "The welcoming committee."

More creaking and clanking. There was a gutteral growl of diesel engines, followed by rattling and wheezing when said engine choked. Rumbling along the gate lumbered an ugly hunk of metal plate—a tank. Its red treads threaded through six squealing steel wheels. Browning vines wrapped the metal exoskeleton; a cape of live leaves flapped in the back.

Sanae thought it was the most ludicrous thing she'd ever seen.

The hatch, painted with a yin-yang insignia, flipped open—a round brown head peeped out, eyes slanted in suspicion. "Who're you?" she mumbled. "Never seen you before."

"You first," Sanae said, before Yukari could stop her.

The head slunk lower into the turret. The eyes never settled, but flitted here to there, never making eye contact. "What's that? Doesn't matter. Go away. I'm armed. Guns to do my talking. Yes, yes. Six-inch selenium shells. Nasty surprises. Shoo. You don't want..._nasty_ surprises." The girl's greasy fingers rapped and tapped on the rim of the turret; she fidgeted incessantly. "Rika. No one gets past Rika, not today. No, no, no."

What a strange person, Sanae thought.

The guard, whose name she guessed was Rika, suddenly looked at the shrine maiden. "You thinking about me, girl?" Caught off-guard, Sanae gibbered a rambling response. It failed to impress. "You were. Weren't you." Rika squinted. "Don't like you. Go away."

Yukari rested her hand on Sanae's shoulder, to gently nudge the shrine maiden aside. "Our names are our own," she said carefully, "but we have urgent business with the Doctor."

"Whatkindofbusiness?" Rika snapped, dripping with venom.

"Questions," Yukari replied, "concerning a recent project."

"Not our fault! Goats floating in Misty Lake—_not our fault_!" Rika railed. Her shouts rang in the tank's cockpit.

Yukari suffered a polite laugh. "No, not that. Quite amusing, though." Then she assumed an aura of seriousness. "I wonder, would one in your position be privy to this type of information? Very sensitive, you understand."

Rika nodded slowly, warily. "Yes. Sensitive. Rika understands. Tell her. She knows many things. Might know this. Rika best guard there is."

"Oh yes, of course." Yukari's smile looked painful. The youkai shuffled closer, with a conspiratorial whisper: "We are here...for the Ark."

The guard's murky brown eyes, muddy pools, flickered in recognition. Or repugnance? Whatever expression she adopted for that instant, it soon resumed glassy disinterest. "Might have heard of that."

"Did you hear me?" Yukari said. "We're on the short list."

Rika's eyes bulged. "Oh." Her gaze shifted—she scrutinized Sanae, then Yukari. Her forehead scrunched. "Sorry. Ship's full. Go home. See ya." The hatch clanked shut.

Yukari's face twitched as her cool mask cracked a smidge. Rage boiled beneath the thin skin of refined manners. "Let us through, underling, or we—"

"Rika doesn't make rules," mumbled the voice inside the tank. "Just does job. So shoo. Don't like you anyway." The diesel engine rumbled, sputtering black smoke—Sanae coughed, but Yukari didn't. The youkai of boundaries stood unmoved.

Yukari's smile morphed into a death rictus. "Is that so." She trembled with the icy rage of one not usually disobeyed. Sanae sensed a need to feel powerful again.

Then Yukari turned her terrifying smile on the shrine maiden. "Sanae, sweetheart, would you be a dear and do one little thing for me?"

Sanae swallowed. "Which is...?"

"Hold down this bitch while I bash in her skull."

Quick as a snake, Yukari blasted a barrage of bullets—which Sanae ducked—and the bright bursts ricocheted off the tank's shell. As the tank revved with a throaty grumble, Sanae leaped back to stand by Yukari. The turret turned toward them, aimed and armed.

"Any more brilliant ideas?" Sanae muttered.

"One," said Yukari. She summoned light to her hands. "Don't get hit."

The tank fired.

Sanae and Yukari scattered. The shell detonated, tossing up dust and dirt. Yukari returned fire—the steel skin soaked up her shots. More earsplitting explosions. The tank fired again and again, barrel spewing smoke and shells. The machine rocked back from the force of the bursts.

Cower," rang Rika's voice inside the cockpit. "Cower before the power of my Flower Tank!"

"I wonder how long it took her to come up with that," Yukari muttered.

From a safe distance, Sanae tried to shoot straight down the barrel. She nearly took a six-inch selenium shell to the face. Good thing Yukari batted the shell out of the air, swinging her parasol. "Are you an idiot?" Yukari snapped. "Get up close! Make yourself useful!"

"Why me?" Sanae said, but another explosion drowned out the retort.

Suddenly, the shots stopped. Sanae paused.

Rika cackled. "_Nasty_ surprises..."

With a crank and a clank, the tank released its stores—white wisps hissed from the main gun, like it was belching fog. At first Sanae thought it was gas, but then she looked closer. She discerned shapes in the mist, round, smooth. Ethereal entities jostled and spilled out of ports in the hull. And Sanae instantly recognized them for what they were.

"Bakebake," Rika muttered. "Get 'em."

Ghosts, tongues lolling, mouths craving the sweet spirits of living beings. Sanae hadn't seen one in years.

"Oh dear," said Yukari, alarmingly calm. "What a nuisance."

The swarm swirled around Sanae, bumping her, biting her, backing her up against a tree. One ghost licked her neck, leaving a chilly trail of ectoplasm.

With one shot, Yukari blasted a bunch of them out existence.

"Are you crazy, or just lazy?" Yukari said. She rolled her neck toward the tank. "Stop that thing!"

And Sanae leaped into action.

She sprinted straight at the tank.

It flashed into her mind—a forbidden spell, one Reimu taught her years ago. Use this when things get bad, she said. Really, really bad. Use it, but remember, it'll cost you...

Sanae channeled the strength of her spirit into a single strike.

When she was close enough to kiss the tank's cold hard hull, she whispered the words.

And the qi-bomb exploded.

From the force of the blast, the tank reared back. When given a final shove from Yukari's bullets, the tank crashed back through the gate. The chain-link fence ripped with a scream of metal; razor wire snapped and whipped.

Sanae collapsed, exhausted.

Steam billowed from the overturned tank, smoke from the split barrel. From inside the cockpit came the pilot's muffled muttering. Rika banged her fists uselessly, but the hatch was pinned shut by the tank's own weight. The girl was trapped. Sanae almost felt sorry for her.

Yukari flitted to Sanae's side. "Shall we go?" she said pleasantly. No word of thanks, or good-job, or even a get-out-of-the-way. Not that Sanae expected anything positive from her.

Together they strode through the gap in the gate.

"I'm rather glad to be rid of that mumbling, grumbling paranoiac," Yukari remarked offhand. "Fortunately, she was in no danger of lapsing into competence. All the better for us."

Sanae stumbled in a dreamlike daze. Truly, the strength had gone out of her. That attack tapped into her life force—she couldn't fire a bullet for an hour, maybe two. And only after she'd eaten. That clump of crabgrass poking out of the packed earth looked unnervingly appetizing...

"Now the real work begins," Yukari continued. "The good Doctor won't take our intrusion lightly. We must proceed with caution."

"Caution," Sanae repeated, chuckling in disbelief. The topsy-turvy tank sat behind them, engine crackling as it cooled.

She looked up the hill at the facility. Its tall windows glowed against the starless sky. What was here that deserved protecting?

However, Yukari was fluent in body language. "You're curious," she said. Sanae, tired of people reading her thoughts today, nodded. "With good reason," Yukari continued. She popped open her parasol. "Very well. If you must know, everything is connected. Your gods, my abruptly absent powers, Gensokyo, everything. Everything goes back to Reimu Hakurei, especially how—"

A screech off steel. The tank blew apart, scattering shrapnel. A pod emerged from the wreckage. Round, floating, sinister—the front split open, and a huge red eye blinked. Purple wings sprouted from the back, writhing purple tentacles from the front. A golden halo glowed above it.

"Evil Eye Sigma!" Rika roared. "Get them!"

Red veins throbbed in the evil eye.

And the storm of bullets followed.

Yukari leaped in front of Sanae, shielding the shrine maiden with the parasol. The stream split the storm into divergent streams.

"Go," Yukari urged, though not with a whiff of urgency or apparent concern for Sanae's safety. Only...annoyance. "I'll take care of this. You go on ahead."

Sanae saw no need to argue. Hunkering down, she dashed up the hill toward the facility, while Yukari took on the guard outside.

"Give in, plebeian!" Yukari called behind, and more bright lights lit the night.

Sanae watched none of them.

She ran ahead, and the sounds of battle faded.

* * *

**A/N**: Though far from the strongest or most focused chapter, this installment took an embarrassingly long time to write. Some days, the words flow easier than others. As Aya would well know, from last chapter. Thanks for reading anyway. Onward to our last and laziest duo of anti-heroes...


	7. Stage 2-C: (Scarlet Devil Mansion)

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—little else remained of Scarlet Devil Mansion.

"More masterpieces from Her Majesty's pyromaniacs, if I'm not mistake," said Kaguya, grimacing.

Mokou huffed. "Sure isn't _my_ work." She tromped through the thick carpet of ash, her bare soles blackening with sticky soot, pricking upon the occasional chunk of charcoal. Mokou scowled in disapproval at the few walls still standing, and the charred rafters that formed the mansion's black bones. "Artless amateurs," Mokou muttered.

Kaguya kicked a stick—it rattled down the stairs to the cellar. "I heard a vampire lived here once," she said. "She was called the Scarlet Devil, and she had a little sister. I wonder what's become of them."

"Beats me," Mokou said irritably, not even faking an interest. "Get on with it. Where's this thing we're looking for?"

"Right this way." Beckoning, Kaguya descended the cellar stairs with dignity and grace. Mokou followed, feet clomping. One heavy step crashed right through—the fire-eaten stairs swallowed Mokou's leg up to the knee. Kaguya stifled a perverse giggle.

With its gloomy stone decor, dusty and rusty tools of torture, and rows upon rows of chains bolted to the walls, the cellar might have been creepy once. Now sunbeams streamed in through the absent ceiling, washing the mansion's darkest secrets with the light of day. Over the odor of smoke, Mokou smelled niter, rot, and the faintest hints of old blood. Frowning, she rolled another cigarette.

Kaguya glanced back up the staircase, her nose wrinkled. "And what do you think you're doing?"

"Making a cig. Not that it's any of your business."

"It is." Kaguya turned away. "It's rude, it stinks, and it ruins the insides of your lungs. I also happen to find the habit highly offensive."

"Well, _excuse_ me, princess." Mokou drew a pinch of tobacco from the pouch in her pocket, then spread the dried leaf bits on the rolling paper. "Not like I have to worry about my health or anything." She licked the sticky strip, then massaged the tobacco-stuffed paper into a smooth cylinder, scraping off any excess leaves that squeezed out the ends. "Besides, I actually _like _my nicotine fix. What's the point of living forever, or living at all, if you can't enjoy it?" She lit the tip with a flame from her thumb.

Kaguya frowned and folded her arms. "Such a selfish philosophy. Does your type never think of how your petty pleasures affect others? For instance, have you heard of secondhand smoke?"

"Keine mentioned it once or twice. Wasn't listening." Mokou blew a smoke ring in Kaguya's face—puckering, the princess waved away the smoke. "Wonder who's die of cancer first," Mokou drawled, "you or me?"

"Not funny," Kaguya snapped. "Yours is an odious, malodorous behavior which I insist you cease immediately."

"Oh, using big words to get what you want, huh?" Mokou grinned, cigarette clamped between her teeth. A flame flared in the palm of her hand. "Make me."

Kaguya puffed up for a fight, but momentarily relaxed. "No," she said coolly. "No, I refuse to stoop to your level. And I will not let you provoke me into another unnecessary skirmish. We have work to do."

Kimono fluttering, Kaguya stormed into the basement. Shrugging, Mokou ambled after her.

Then Mokou heard it—jangling chains, and the moans of a prisoner devoid of hope.

"That you, princess?" called a husky, dusky voice. Chains rattled again. "Oh, look. You've brought a friend."

The girl was chained to the wall, manacles clapped on her wrists and ankles. Her long hair gleamed gold, but her eyes were only dull yellow. Her mouth twisted in a smarmy smirk. "Hail the conquering pervert." Ribs protruded from her sunken belly; only the barest scraps of rags covered her chest and waist.

Mokou shot Kaguya a queer look. "It was for a strip-search!" Kaguya insisted, blushing.

"Uh-huh."  
"Really!"

"I didn't say anything."

Hands stuffed in pockets, Mokou approached the gaunt prisoner. "Sup?" She puffed at her cigarette. For a second, she considered offering the girl a drag, but reconsidered her offer a second later. Mokou said, "Mind telling me who the hell you are?"

"Kurumi, a lesser vampire from Her Majesty Mima's marvelous marauders," Kaguya answered quickly. She gestured from the vampire to Mokou—"Meet your new interrogator."

Kurumi smirked. "Charmed, I'm sure."

Already Mokou liekd this girl, for her spunk if not her smell. She reeked like garlic left out in the sun. If nothing else, she'd be marginally more fun than a stiff, stuffy princess.

"All right," Mokou said. "What've you got to say for yourself, vamp? You gonna sing?"

Kurumi's chains jingled as she shrugged. "Depends. Any requests?"

Mokou glanced at Kaguya. "Yes, what song _do_ we want to hear?"  
"Start with what you told me," Kaguya said. She clasped her hands in her kimono sleeves, preening her regal demeanor.

Kurumi sighed. "Which was?"

"What you were doing when I found you."

"Since you seem to know so much, why don't _you_ tell her?"

"Vampire." The tone threatened much worse than death.

The prisoner shook herself, rattling her chains. "Fine, fine. Geez. It all runs together when you're chained to a wall. You should try it sometime." She took a deep breath.

"After our spectacular bonfire on these premises, I was sent to sift through the ruins of Scarlet Devil Mansion. Solo recon, standard procedure grunt work, right? Only I hear there's a catch. Something down in the cellar her Majesty Mima doesn't want seeing the light of day. Which it is now, as you may've noticed. Could jeopardize the whole scheme, and all that. You following me? It's a big effing deal.

"So I go, check this place out, but I find nothing too special, except for the huge weird thing I'm supposed to be looking for. I confirm, Yes, this is the huge weird thing I'm looking for. I check it off my list, write up a report, and I'm on my merry way. But then this loony princess catches me snooping. Before I can get out a hello, she chains me to the wall, strips me of my dignity along with pretty much everything else, and starts doing what you're doing right now, asking stupid questions about stuff that's got nothing to do with you. Princess here hangs me out to dry, so I hang out here for a couple days. And here we are."

Kurumi sagged. "That's about it. Anything else you wanna know?"

The vamp had style, Mokou had to admit. And the look on Kaguya's face was priceless.

"You know what I meant," Kaguya hissed. "Tell us what you were searching for."

"Do I have to? I already told you."

"I want her to hear it from you."

"Hear what, again?"

Kaguya cocked her head threateningly, eyes blazing black fire.

"Oh, _that_." Kurumi rolled her eyes. Her languid gaze settled on something past Mokou—difficult to tell exactly what. "You wouldn't be interested in _that_. It's too boring. So boring, I was getting bored just thinking about it, hanging here, where there's nothing better to do but think until your brains dribble out your ears."

"Vampire," Kaguya warned, reddening.

"You want to be bored to death? Fine." Kurumi sighed again. "Really, I can't imagine what Her Majesty would even want with one. It's only a portal to hell."

Mokou froze. She dug her pinkie into her ear. "Not sure I heard that right. What?"

"A por-tal to hell," Kurumi repeated, enunciating carefully for the intelligence-impaired. "In the cellar of a big creepy mansion? It's so TYPICAL! What were they thinking, seriously? That it'd balance out the feng shui of their torture dungeon to have a gateway to the netherworld in the back corner? Or is it supposed to be a conversation-starter at ballroom parties? 'What's that horrid stench clogging the festive atmosphere?' they'd say. 'Could it be brimstone wafting from the dimension of everlasting torment?' 'Why, indeed it is.' 'Nifty!' 'Quite. I had your basic Portal 2 Hell package installed last Tuesday. With the limited two-year warranty, of course, in case the unholy legions decide to overthrow the realm of mortals.' 'Oh, how exciting! It must be all the rage these days!' 'It's not really as interesting as it sounds. More of a hassle, actually. Have to feed it the appropriate number of wayward innocents or it gobbles the planet.' 'Surely you're joking!' 'No, really. Want to try it out?'"

Now that Kaguya succeeded in getting her prisoner to talk, the problem was getting her to shut up. Mokou observed Kaguya's doomed efforts with mild amusement.

"However that portal got there, Mima wanted it contained," Kaguya murmured, ignoring Kurumi's further babbling. The princess turned the crank to tighten the chains, stretching the vampire flat against the wall.

"Why?" Mokou said. "She just got out of there! She leave her keys or something?"

"Maybe it's a status issue," Kurumi continued, staring out at nothing in particular. " 'All the other houses in the neighborhood have a basement door to the demon-infested abyss, so why don't we?' Imagine _that _conversation. 'You want a _what_?!' 'You heard me! I want a portal to hell set up down here by Tuesday.' 'A portal to hell?!' 'Yes, a portal to hell.' (Sounds funny when you say it too many times, doesn't it?) 'I want gibbering obscenities swarming and spawning on the lawn by Wednesday morning, or I'll see your summoning license thoroughly revoked!' 'B-but I—' 'No complaints!' 'But it'll take at last a week to acquire the required sacrificial virgins, and as for tomes of mystic lore—' 'Don't talk to me about mystic lore! The nerve! We do BUSINESS here, not flimflam mumbo-jumbo hocus-pocus! Portal to hell, or you're _de_ported to hell!'"

Mokou almost applauded. She wanted to suggest that Kurumi pursue a career in theater, or at least check herself into the nearest schizophrenia ward.

The vampire tugged wearily at her chains. "There, that's the gist of it. Can I go now?"

"Not so fast," Kaguya said. "Have you told us _everything_ you know?"

Kurumi thought for a moment. "Everything? Oh, no. When I'm not burning and pillaging and drinking the blood of disgustingly adorable children, I enjoy knitting socks and breeding hydrangeas. I've also been a vampire since I was a little girl, which incidentally I still am, as you can well see, and..."

Kaguya cut her off. "Thank you, that will be all."

"But I haven't even gotten to the—"

"_That will be all_."

Kurumi drooped. "So can I get down now, or what?"

"We will let you down when I say you—"

A blast of flame caught Kaguya in its infernal wave. The princess collapsed, her body a charred and smoldering ruin.

"Now that she's shut up for a while," Mokou said casually, hand still smoking, "we can have a chat." She turned back the crank to give the chained vampire more slack.

Kurumi looked utterly stupefied, but she visibly relaxed. "What are you...?"

"She'll be back. Look at me." Mokou sauntered toward the vampire, scrutinizing her. "Be honest with me. I'm not nearly as nice as the pretty pretty princess over there, but I won't fill your head with shit. And don't think I'll take any from you, either."

Mokou held eye contact for several silent seconds. "Give it to me straight. You know anything else about this door you were looking for?"

Kurumi shook her head. "Nope. Not a thing. Just following orders."

"You find it?"

"Right over there." Kurumi pointed with her chin. "Buried under that bookcase. How nice of you to simply ask."

Mokou nodded. "Good. Glad we could work this out."

"So..." Kurumi paused, hesitant to push her luck. "You gonna let me down? I gotta have blood soon, or I'll turn to dust before your eyes. Poof! No more me."

"I'm supposed to care?"

"Think of the _mess_!"

Mokou glanced around at the state of the Scarlet estate. Kurumi sighed. "Point taken."

"One more thing." Mokou ventured dangerously close, but with an equally dangerous glow in her eyes. "Why'd you do it? Join Mima, I mean. What's in it for you? Money? Power? A tasty slice of the Wasteland Formerly Known As Gensokyo?"

Kurumi smiled sadly. "Careful, your ignorance is showing." She craned her neck to stare up at the sky. "You know what it's like, to put on a show for people, to pretend so much you eventually forget who you are? I nearly did. All thanks to that shrine maiden. With her around, we youkai had to hide our true faces—the bloodthirsty ones. We acted like good little girls so we didn't get the business end of a big stick." A hollow chuckle shook her. "It felt so good to hear the bitch was actually dead! We could cut loose. And we did. Oh, you'd better believe we did." She flashed Mokou a crooked grin. "Wouldn't you have done the same?"

Again, Mokou nodded. She said nothing more.

Kurumi sagged with relief.

Suddenly, the vampire's features twisted in horror. "Watch out! She's—"

Mokou's skull caved in. Everything went black.

Or, it did for a while. Until she awoke, lying on her side, hair thick with warm blood, head squishy and half-healed. Mokou got up, swaying woozily.

Kaguya, humming to herself, fussed with a standing mirror, frequently checking its position in relation to the sun.

"Don't be a dolt," Kurumi was saying. "I can't see my reflection in there, not that I'd want to, given how I must look right now."

"Oh it's not for you," Kaguya replied cryptically. She steadied the mirror's base, so that the sun's glittering reflection danced on Kurumi's wall, perilously close to her pale chest. "I'm not doing this for you," Kaguya continued. "Right now, you're safe in the shade, since that wall faces north. But come sundown, you'll be a pile of dust. You have until then to think over what you've done with your short life."

"Can't you hurry up, get it over with now?" Kurumi sighed. "Princesses. Never do anything themselves."

Before Kaguya could retort, she noticed Mokou stirring. "Oh, you're awake," she said sweetly. "So sorry. I suppose mashed brains take the longest to recover, recovering all those neurons and such."

Mokou limped and lurched, her motor capacities not completely recovered. "What are you doing?"

"I believe the idiom is, Tying off a loose end." Kaguya tweaked the mirror once more. "There. It's not even noon—this way you'll last hours before you burn."

"Whoop-dee-dang-doo," Kurumi muttered. "Can't a girl get executed in peace?"

"Quiet!" Kaguya snapped.

And she was.

Mokou scowled at the girl on the wall. She didn't like this, not one bit. And it wasn't like Kaguya to torture for fun.

Mokou approached the prisoner as subtly as possible.

"Hey," she murmured, keeping her voice low. "Listen. I don't like this deal any more than you do. You've helped us, I might as well help you. Next time she's—" When Kaguya glanced toward them, Mokou fell silent, acting completely normal. Kaguya looked away, and Mokou continued, "Next time she's not looking, I'll cut you loose, and you make a break for it. How's that?"

Kurumi crooked her finger. Mokou leaned in close.

Closer, closer...

Kurumi kicked Mokou—the vampire's razor-sharp toenails pierced her thigh, slicing her pant leg to ribbons.

"Phooey on that," Kurumi spat. "If you let me go, she'll kill me. C'mon, don't half-ass it. Let me die with pride!"

But Mokou didn't hear her. Numbly, she felt at her slashed pocket. Tobacco leaves spilled on the ground, to mingle with the ashes. Mokou's throat tightened. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead. From the depths of her lungs she felt the dull ache, the hunger...

Mokou lunged and grabbed Kurumi by her scrawny neck. Even as Mokou throttled her, Kurumi choked out, "That's better!"

The vampire grinned. Her fangs glinted.

Kurumi sank her teeth into Mokou's arm.

Kaguya gasped; Mokou wrenched away her forearm, spilling blood and ripping flesh; Kurumi licked her lips, cheeks and chin dripping crimson.

"That's _good_..."

All at once, color returned to her face; her belly swelled slightly, to cover up her ribs; her muscles tensed and flexed.

Kurumi clenched her fists. With a scream of bolts and a spray of dust, the vampire yanked her chains out of the wall.

Mokou leaped back, firing a fireball. Kurumi dodged with inhuman speed. Chains dangled and jangled from each of her four limbs. Limp and livid, Kurumi cracked her neck. A wild grin split her face.

"Get back!" Kaguya cried, but not soon enough. Kurumi swung her fist—the chain on her wrist lashed out and smashed Mokou across the face. Mokou staggered but stayed on her feet.

Kaguya summoned qi for an attack. Kurumi kicked out, chain-whip scoring a hit on Kaguya's shoulder. Spiraling like an acrobat, the vampire then swung both arms—parallel chains slashed at Kaguya...

The two chains glanced off two crystal orbs, not leaving a scratch. The Yin-Yang Orbs orbited close to Kaguya.

Taken back, Kurumi retreated against the wall. She fidgeted there like a caged beast—there was less shady space back here than she thought. She backed into the mirror's reflected beam. When it seared her skin, she yelped and jerked back.

Mokou, blinking back blood as her new eyes jelled, mustered fire in her hands.

Desperate, cornered, Kurumi lashed out again—her rippling chains wrapped around Mokou's neck. Kurumi tugged. Mokou spun, stumbling toward Kurumi's spread jaws, until—

Mokou blasted fire into the vampire's face.

The screams. Without a doubt, the worst part of watching victims burn alive was the screams. They rang in your ears for years, the wretched hymns of the damned. Then there were the smells. Burning skin, and seeing bits of bone peek through the scorched flesh...

Except this particular flesh was healing.

The skin and sinew on the vampire's burned body knit back together, and a very surprised Kurumi regained sentience. She stared at her hands, felt her face, miraculously whole again. She looked at Mokou, who was almost as surprised. "I don't know who you are," Kurumi said breathlessly, "but that was the best blood I've ever had! I haven't felt this good since—"

A whirling crystal orb slammed into her head. The pair of Yin-Yang Orbs drove Kurumi to the grounds, pounding her, pummeling her, grinding her face into the dust. When her body healed enough to move, the orbs crushed her again.

It made Mokou sick to watch. She tossed a pleading look at Kaguya. With a shrug, the princess indulged Mokou.

The Yin-Yang Orbs clamped together and dragged Kurumi's broken body. Together they cast her into the direct sunlight.

More screams. More sizzling flesh, growing back as fast as it burned away. A twisted hand clawed with what must have once been fingers, but when held against the light they crumbled into boiling jelly...

Mokou nearly vomited. She turned her back on that poor _thing_, and on the monster enjoying her pain. "Let's go," she muttered. She shot a glare at Kaguya. "You're sick, you know that?"

Mokou went to the bookcase, where she uncovered the portal to hell.

It looked nothing like what Rodin had in mind. Instead it was a door in the floor, made of plain stained wood with a plain brass knob. There was only the faintest odor of sulfur.

Kaguya sidled up beside Mokou, flecks of blood on her face. "Here we are. Shall we?"

"Go to hell, Kaguya."

"You first."

The door opened with a creak, revealing a roiling red lake. Now the stench hit Mokou full force—but she refused to gag.

Whatever's down there, she thought, can't be much worse than what's up here.

She jumped.


	8. Stage 3-A: (Makai)

"So this is Makai."

If a lull slumped into a conversation, Aya attempted to liven the atmosphere by stating the blindingly obvious.

To which the witch replied, "Uh-huh."

And thus the lull resumed.

Around them, the land took the form of a field of flowers, stretching into an infinite summer's day. But Marisa was determined not to enjoy an instant of it. The sun felt too bright, the grass too smooth, the breeze too soft, the flowers too sweet. Like paint spilled on a blank canvas, it burst with brilliant color, but was a mistake masquerading as a masterpiece—patches of blank canvas slip through. Seams popping in a patchwork illusion.

Altogether, the world tried too hard to look real. So _right_, it felt _wrong_.

A sparrow fluttered out of the achingly blue sky to settle on Aya's shoulder. Laughing, Aya reached out to pat its little head. The bird chirped cheerily.

Marisa blew it to oblivion with a Master Spark.

"Be on your guard," Marisa snapped. She brushed scorched feathers from Aya's shirt, while Aya stood stunned. "This isn't our world. And Mima has spies everywhere...even here." The witch fluffed up her pointy hat, perhaps to deter further feathered fiends. "Besides, birds don't really do that. EVER."

Aya grumbled something about "distant cousins," but continued following.

As she trailed after Marisa, Aya rummaged in her shirt for her notebook, but ultimately left it alone. "So what IS Makai, anyway?" she asked, off the cuff and off the record. "I mean, I've heard of it, but..."

"It's a Dream World."

Since the meeting with Ellen, Marisa had sported a fouler mood than usual; foul even for a witch. And to think she'd been so pleased to discuss Aya's stint as a novelist.

"A dream world made by a powerful sorcerer," Marisa continued, voice low. "I met her once, actually. Nice girl; odd, kind of spacey. Not above cutting a deal with Mima, is what I mean. Shiki doesn't care what happens to the world outside, so long as she remains insulated in this comfortable prison of her own creation."

"I know some people like that," Aya remarked. "Mostly artists, musicians. I interviewed the Prismriver Sisters once—gods, was THAT an experience. You wouldn't believe half the weird crap they're into. One time..."

But Marisa displayed no interest. Not in gerbil-dung cigars, alien semaphore messages from eleven-dimensional planet Arcturus IV, or Aya's doomed attempts to lighten the mood.

"Focus," Marisa said. "We're on the warpath, not vacation."

Aya chuckled snidely, but didn't snipe back. Strange. Usually she had a retort ready. What'd happened to her?

The witch. Aya oozed charm and wit, but Marisa sliced through the fog of lukewarm lies with a single razor-sharp stare. Truly a master of deception trusts no one.

While she walked in this strange world, Aya asked herself why she was even here anymore. Sadly, she suffered the debilitating syndrome that caused her private thoughts to dribble into her mouth: "Why am I even here anymore?"

"Because," Marisa said, with the sickly-sweet patience tinged with pity used by adults when addressing an idiot child, "if you go back out into that cave, you're dead. If you get lost in this world, you're dead." She grinned. "Way I see it, unless you stick with me, you're dead no matter what you do."

Even then, the witch's company had proved a less than ideal survival situation. Aya thought on that.

"Who made you an expert? Have you been here before?"

"Yeah." The witch faced the fields and flowers with undisguised disgust. "I had a girl once, came from here."

"Oh, really. Which one?"

Marisa ignored the jab. "THE one. Alice. Soft as silk, sweet as sin. I met her here in Makai, back before...well, we'll say before I was became a law-abiding citizen. I knew all along she was too good for me. Think she knew too, but she never cared about little stuff like that. We hit it off, had a couple happy years together. Then...winter came." She shivered.

Aya stared at her. "Why are you telling me this?"

"It's called 'reaching out,' crow. Don't make me regret it."

Now seemed a splendid time to volunteer information. Aya swallowed.

"I lost friends too," Aya said, "after the Rise. Heh. Funny how it came right after the Fall. You know, the season?"

"Continue."

Drooping, Aya did so. "Once Mima got into power, her crowd put the squeeze on all us news outlets. Had us tweak the tone, forgo objectivity for propaganda-more than usual. After a couple issues of that trash, we lost subscribers. They left in droves, with no one to replace them. Mima's minions aren't exactly renowned for their literary sophistication.

"Soon people started disappearing. My people. Momiji was always too kind, too honest for journalism-she was among the first to go. Then more, then more. I made myself useful so I wouldn't be the next to turn in a deadly pink slip. By then we were barely bigger than a private press. But the paper remained Mima's mouthpiece, her way to shout at the world.

"Not all of us believed the crap our papers spouted, but some went all in-Hatate, for one, welcomed our ghostly overlord. She lives comfortably for it. Meanwhile, me...when I'm not oiling the gears in Her Majesty's propaganda machine, I put out dispatches for the resistance—printed at personal expense—in case there ever come to be enough others who hate Mima as much as I do."

Aya finished. Marisa nodded.

Hazarding a smile, Aya said, "I feel we can understand each other better now."

Marisa looked at her, unblinking. "Don't count on it, kid." She brushed by, bristling.

Finally, a proper retort sprang into Aya's mind, She was about to deploy it, in fact, when she noticed a twinkle in the sky. "What's that?"

Marisa stopped. She saw it too.

Winking in the blue, down tumbled a snowflake. A pinprick in the phantasm, glittering with unearthly fervor.

Marisa put out her hand to catch it.

On a sultry summer's day, standing a in a field of flowers, a witch caught a single falling snowflake.

It melted.

Then the world melted too.

The bright blue heavens peeled away, stripping back to reveal gangrenous black skies. On the wings of darkness, a breath of bitter cold swept the fields. When Aya looked again, the flowers were encased in a crust of ice. The ground smoldered a deep, dead red. Noxious miasma clogged the air, roiling and coiling.

All was deathly still.

"Welcome to the real Makai," Marisa said grimly. "Stay close. Remember, I'm your only way back."

Aya gulped. "Gotcha. I'll do that."

The witch strode onward, ice cracking and crackling underfoot. Aya followed reluctantly. Loath to latch onto Marisa's arm, instead she traced the witch's pointy hat bobbing through the fog.

Soon Marisa stopped, sighed. "This is getting annoying." At the swing of her hand, there blew a gust of wind—the miasma cleared, although briefly. In the distance, over meadows red as a ground cherry, past forests of pure crystal, Aya saw a palace of glass.

A translucent fortress, partly enveloped in miasma: tall, thin towers topped with slender spires; looming curtain walls and boxy turrets; massive gates and tiny shiny windows glittering upon the face of the sheer, sleek crystal walls.

The sight took Aya's breath away.

So did the blue-haired girl in the pink dress, who stood waiting on that red meadow, and the orb of ice currently hurtling from her hand.

An instant after she registered what she just saw, Aya jolted. "Oh sh—Marisa!"

The witch turned. Saw the girl. Swore. Ducked. The ice-ball whizzed past them, then fell and skidded in the frozen flowers.

Smiling enigmatically, the blue-haired girl approached.

"Who are you?" Aya cried out, but immediately realized her mistake. Judging by the witch's drawn face, Marisa knew who she was, and wasn't pleased to see her.

Marisa looked from the corners of her eyes. "Aya," she murmured, "Watch out. There's bound to be an—"

A flash of flame, and a fireball burst by her ear. A ring of flowers thawed, but at their first gasp of Makai's atmosphere, the freed flowers wilted.

Standing sideways, glancing behind and before, Marisa calmly said, "Mai, Yuki. What a pleasure to see you again. It's been so long."

"Liar," hissed a voice. "Not long enough, I say." A girl, yellow-haired and yellow-eyed, stalked out of the miasma, her red dress swishing.

Mai, the girl in pink, stood in front; Yuki, the girl in red, stood behind. A pincer attack.

Continuing with her infamous observational prowess, Aya pointed and declared, "You're WITCHES!"

"So we are," Mai murmured.

Yuki spat, adjusting her dark red hat. "Thought we'd never see YOU again, dropout. Where'd you go after you ran off?"

"Away," Marisa replied, alarmingly calm. "Though, to be honest, I lasted longer than I'd expected. I've never much cared for the company of other witches."

"That so," Yuki leered. She summoned flames in her hand. "Can't imagine why."

"Am I missing something?" Aya whispered to Marisa. "Who ARE these people?"

"Old friends," Marisa replied tightly.

"So?"

"I don't have any old friends. They have a nasty habit of turning into enemies."

"Oh."

Marisa regarded the witches. "Ah, hell with it, I'll ask. Any chance you've seen my old master lately? Can't miss her. Tall, green-haired, kinda ghostly? Sports a sweet pointy hat."

"Her Majesty Mima?" Mai inquired.

"Yep, that's the one," Marisa said, affecting laughter.

"Oh, her." Yuki cackled. "We might've. What's that to you?"

"No games, no tricks. I'd just like to find out where she is, have a chat."

Yuki circled Marisa and Aya, like a panther stalking its prey. "Yeah? You'll have to go through us first, won't you."

"Suppose so," Marisa sighed. "How much is she paying you?"

"Pay?

Yuki snorted; Mai suppressed a giggle. "Pay?"

"There's no pay," Yuki sneered. "We get to keep our lives—that's all we need or want. Oh, and destroy things. You used to love that part. I've been called to the 'real world' for some freelance work, good old-fashioned burning and pillaging. A shrine here, a schoolhouse there, a couple mansions in between...it's a living. Our kind have to find work somehow."

Marisa chuckled. "Ain't that the truth."

The witches stopped circling. They stood in silence.

"How about it?" Yuki said. "You gonna die quietly?"

Marisa tensed. "You know me better than that."

"We thought as much," Mai sighed.

Aya raised a hand. "Um, excuse me, can't we just talk it o-"

An explosion of ice and fire. Marisa spun-wind whipped out at the witches, deflecting their elemental spells. Grabbing Aya, Marisa sprinted for the shelter of the crystalline forest. The other witches pursued, shooting spells.

They reached the trees. Marisa dove behind a gnarled crystal trunk. It shattered at a blast of ice. Her cover blown, Marisa fired a Master Spark as she slunk behind the next tree.

Panicked, Aya unfurled her wings and fluttered into a tree...where she met Mai's eyes. Unfortunately, the witch could fly too. Squalling and squealing, Aya leaped from the tree, chased by flying ice.

"You can't hide!" Yuki cried. Brandishing a whip of fire, Yuki demolished Marisa's latest haven, then dodged the ensuing Master Spark.

"Watch me!" Marisa shot back, both with her retort and a burst of yellow bullets.

Yuki dodged these trivialities without difficulty. "I will too. You can't hide. The trees are CLEAR, moron!"

She had a point. Marisa reconsidered the efficacy of her strategy as she hopped from tree to tree, fired again, missed again. "Good thing we're all such terrible shots, otherwise someone might actually get hurt."

Yuki ground her teeth. The witch stood in the new clearing she'd made with her spells, a circle littered with shattered crystal. Fire in her eyes and literally in her hands, Yuki stormed toward Marisa...

And Marisa summoned a whirlwind.

The gusts swirled around Yuki, stopping her in her tracks, taking off her hat. The wings of wind lifted up the sharp shards...and the crystalline storm lashed out at Yuki, with jingling, tinkling, splintering fury. The witch screamed.

At Marisa's command, the wind abated. Flying shards smashed on the ground or crashed into other trees.

When the crystal dust settled, Yuki tottered amid the shattered shards, her dress torn, her face sliced, her whole body bloody. She pointed a trembling finger at Marisa.

"Dirty trick," she gurgled, "dirty trick..."

"Don't look at me," Marisa said with a shrug, "you did this to yourself. I'm not cruel by nature. You provided me with an opportunity, and it so happens I just don't like you."

"Marisa!"

She whirled around at the sound of her name.

Aya was pinned against a clump of trees, face pressed into the crystal, limbs frozen to the crystalline trunks. Mai's eyes gleamed with cold glee.

Marisa acted at once.

A Master Spark struck Mai in the back. With an agonized cry, the ice witch dropped.

Yuki cried, "Mai!" She ran, and Marisa dropped her, too. Yuki splayed in the carpet of glass, moaning.

Now Marisa aimed at Aya."Hold still." Marisa shot out the ice holding her, and Aya broke free, cold and wet but otherwise intact.

Sighing with relief, Marisa took a step toward Aya...

"Just kidding."

...till a pillar of ice rammed into her chest. Marisa gasped—spittle flew from her lips. She stumbled, cold spreading over her body.

"Don't worry. It won't kill you."

Mai rose to her feet, calmly brushing herself off. "What? You thought a mere tickle would be enough to stop me?" She glanced at the twitching, bleeding figure on the ground. "Her, maybe. But not me."

The crushing cold pressed the breath out of Marisa. She dropped to her knees—shards drove into her kneecaps.

Mai sauntered toward Marisa, relaxed and detached. "Her Majesty is sure to reward me for capturing her favorite student." She ran her fingers through Marisa's clumpy yellow hair. Marisa shuddered at her chilly, clammy touch. Mai cooed in her ear, "Imagine all the ways she'll _welcome _you back into the fold..."

Aya watched from the edge of the forest, frozen by fear if not by ice. She watched, paralyzed, as Mai's whispered threats reduced Marisa to quivering jelly. She watched, and could not bring herself to look away.

"Pathetic," Mai murmured. She looked up, noticing Aya. "Are you still here? How irritating. Yuki." Mai crunched over and kicked the fallen body. "Yuki, get up. I know you're awake. Come now, we have prey."

The witch twitched. Trembling, she stood, brushing off bits of crystal. She staggered and settled her blazing gaze on Aya.

"Go get her," Mai urged.

Yuki obeyed. She shambled toward Aya, barely able to walk.

"Now," Mai purred, returning her full attention to Marisa, "what shall we do with you?"

Marisa cast a pleading look at Aya. "Lazy idiot...help me..."

But Aya simply stared, horrified.

Lurching, Yuki laid hands on Aya's shoulders. "Le's go," she slurred, lip split, spitting blood. "We got lots to..."

There was a flash of light—Aya snapped her camera. As Yuki staggered, cursing, Aya took off into the forest.

"You fool!" Mai shrilled. Her calm facade shattered like a dropped wineglass. But she settled just as quickly. "No matter. Let her go. She's not important to Her Majesty's plans."

Marisa's ears perked up. "Just so you know," she said slowly, "she bragged about ties to the resistance. I really, really think you should go after her."

"Shut up!" Mai snapped, slapping Marisa. Mai looked to Yuki. "You watch this witch. I'm going after her myself."

"Shouldn't the stronger witch stay with the prisoner? If I weren't me, I wouldn't want me to get away or anything."

"Shut up!" Mai snapped again. "Yuki, new plan. You go, I stay."

The gravely wounded witch slumped. "Eh? But I don't wanna..."

"You WILL go! I'll hex you if I have to. Her Majesty put you under MY command. Go!"

Yuki hesitated. Somewhere in her pain-scarred mind, she wanted to obey, but the rest of her body said, Forget it. She swayed on her feet, threatening to fall.

When her commands weren't obeyed, Mai fired ice. Yuki barely managed to dodge, but retained enough sense to retort with a burst of fire. Mai sprang at her companion, snarling.

And Marisa glimpsed another great opportunity.

While her captors quarreled, she stole away.

Into the forest.

After Aya.

* * *

**A/N**: _And THAT, dear readers, is why Marisa Kirisame ranks among the most popular characters out of HUNDREDS. Not just that she's in practically every game, or that she has the most (and best) themes, but because, beneath the prickly exterior and comedic sociopathy, she's got a backbone made of adamantium. The song of her soul would be a never-ending electric guitar solo. Small wonder that (in)famous remix group IOSYS's local guitar god slammed out blistering renditions of her two most famous themes (respectively entitled Sparkling Slash and Nighttime Cruising, now only a YouTube search away). And it...is...glorious._

_Releasing late this week, getting back on schedule starting next Monday. Cheers!_


	9. Stage 3-B: (The Secret Lab)

**A/N**: _Punctuality? Whazzat? P, U, N, C...maybe use it in a sentence..._

* * *

A door.

Twenty-one feet tall, nine across. A solid sheet of concrete-reinforced steel, gleaming gray in the harsh fluorescent lights. Eight locks. Vacuum-sealed; an amoeba couldn't crawl through the cracks.

One way in: square number pad, eight-digit pass-code; 40,320 possible combinations. Plus a retinal/fingerprint laser scan, thus reducing the means of entry into a hideous immobile hunk of metal.

And it stood in Sanae's way.

She fidgeted, scratching her head, casting glances back the way she came. No good. Yukari would be too far away to hear her, and besides, judging by the flashes in the distance, she'd be a bit busy.

What could Sanae do? Not much. Deploying that bomb had fried her qi circuits—she had about an hour until her metabolism replenished her energy. Until then, she was helpless.

Well...mostly helpless.

Racking her brain, Sanae speculated upon every potential scheme, up to just knocking. Soon she found her fist about to pound on the steel sheet. She sighed. What could it hurt?

Rap-a-tap-tap.

No response. Well, nobody home, might as well—

The door jolted. Sanae did too.

With a hiss of air and the whir of gears, the wall crawled up. The steel receded to reveal a stark white corridor. Bleak. Sterile.

And a moment later, voices, footsteps.

Breath caught in her throat, Sanae slipped into the shadows. She hugged the wall, the blind spot at the door's corner.

"...more unpaid overtime, I'm outta here."

"Don't be a ninny, you know her better than that. Probably just kidding. Probably. Or she'll forget everything by morning."

Heavy feet trundled after the voices.

Two girls in shabby drab fatigues. Youkai, by the look of them. The smell, too.

"Nah, nah, you got it all mixed up," the one said to the other, not unkindly. "You must be thinking Big Doc. The real taskmaster's Li'l Doc, though she don't look it."

"How d'you figure?"

"Well, lemme put it this way. Ever meet her new assistant?"

A pause. "Can't say I have."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. So anyways, I was patrolling the R&D wing, when suddenly—" The one guard paused; Sanae stayed perfectly still. "Thought I heard something," the guard muttered. "Probably nothing. Damn job makes you jumpy."

A sigh. "I'm done. Double shift's over, no more work-related chitchat. Gotta get back to feed the kids."

"Eh? You got kids? Since when?"

"Last week's raid. Human brats, precious little monsters. Almost fat enough to eat."

"Nice."

"It's the little things that make you miss working for Mima."

"Hey, the Doc pays well. I don't gripe."

"Or else—"

"Or else Chi-chi shoots my face off, yeah."

The youkai lumbered off into the night.

If those two ever stumbled upon Rika and Yukari, Sanae heard nothing of it. Though she doubted they could be persuaded to interfere off the clock.

Meanwhile, Sanae had more important matters to consider. Such as squeezing under the door before it locked shut or squashed her in two.

The door shut; its bolts slammed into place.

Sanae crouched on the other side, staring down the corridor. She had to move. When she got to go, her hakama, snagged in the door, tugged and tore. Sanae swore. She tucked in the shred of her skirt and stole away before another patrol caught her.

Wide halls with white walls; locked doors, harsh lights. It felt like she'd wandered into another story.

To better move in silence, Sanae slipped off her sandals and carried them. Not that it saved her.

"Oi. Who're you?"

She spun—

There stood one lone guard, a wolf youkai, blocking the hallway and looking dangerously inquisitive.

Sanae edged away.

"Easy," the guard said slowly. "Not like I'm gonna hurt y—"

Sanae threw her shoes and ran.

Rubbing her sore forehead, the guard bounded after her, muttering, "They NEVER believe me!"

Sanae padded past doors, rows and rows of closed doors. A maze of sharp right angles and frosted glass windows sprawled from the main hall—Sanae wove through the maze to confuse her one pursuer, but only managed to pick up more.

"There she is!"

"Who?"

"Dunno! Get her!"

As a gaggle of guards galumphed after her, Sanae smacked into the door at the end of the hall.

It swung open—Sanae tumbled inside—and swung itself shut, sealing the guards outside. Only their futile pawing and clawing passed through the wall of solid steel.

Sanae sat back and sighed.

Safe at last.

"Oh, hello."

Never mind.

A wide-eyed girl, eyes made wider through her thick round glasses, paused before pouring liquid into a beaker. The girl barely blinked.

By its shelves of beakers and microscopes and scientific textbooks, the room seemed to be a laboratory. In true scientific fashion, its sole occupant wore a white lab coat, though more as an excuse to work than as actual clothing. The coat was shabby, shaggy, and in dire need of a good washing. Much like the girl herself.

Sanae sat perfectly still, wondering if the girl could even see her through those lenses.

The doctor tottered toward Sanae. "Let me get a look at you," she said, distracted, never making eye contact. She stared unblinking at the floor, or her hands as she wiped her glasses on her sleeve. The lenses were so smudged, rubbing only spread the smudge.

It had to happen. She wasn't looking where she was going, bumped into a table, and fell back on her bum.

Sanae felt a stirring of pity. "Are you all right?" Cautiously, Sanae extended a hand to help her up. The girl stared at Sanae's hand, or rather its pinkish blur, as if it were some strange mollusk taken leave of its shell. Then, with a cry of delighted comprehension, she took it and hauled herself up.

"You must be the specimen I asked for," the girl said cheerily. She adjusted her glasses, only for them to slip back down her oily nose. "I'm Dr. Rikako Asakura. I'll be taking care of you."

First, Sanae wondered who would be taking care of whom. Then she said, "Rikako? Like the gatekeeper out—"

"No relation," the doctor replied quickly, smile strained.

Rikako paused, clasped her hands. "Where are my manners? Probably tucked in my desk somewhere. Come, come, follow me!" She bounced around the lab tables, a spring in her step. Fiddling with a bunch of beakers and Bunsen burners, she continued, "I'll just call in my assistant in, and we can begin."

Sanae blanched. A memory lurked in the back of her mind. "Assistant? Is she...new, by any chance?"

"Eh?" Rikako wiped her glasses again, was equally effective at spreading the smudge. "Is she? If only I knew. There's been a new assistant every week, seems like. And some claim to be the same person as the old assistants. But that's silly, of course. After a while, they all just blend together..."

Yes, Sanae mused, considering Rikako's fingerprint-fogged glasses, I'll bet they do.

"Helpers come and go," Rikako continued, gesturing to her hordes of equipment, "but the work remains forever."

Suddenly, the door shuddered—all over the room, glass rattled.

"That must be her now." Rikako beamed brightly, pushing up her glasses. She frowned. "Oh, I hope she doesn't—"

There was a tremendous explosion—and, once the dust cleared, a huge hole where the door used to be. Glowing globs of molten metal spattered the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Sanae peered out from behind a lab table, where she'd taken refuge.

"—do that again." Rikako sighed. "Really! I left it unlocked this time, I do believe!"

Through the inconvenient new entrance, there thrust a steaming cannon. A low voice rumbled, "Wasn't open, Doc."

"Was too!" Rikako insisted, flustered. She glanced upward, tapping her chin. "Or, I thought it was."

"Think better next time." In clomped a huge foot, encased in a concrete boot, with electrons the size of persimmons whirling around the ankle.

Sanae's breath caught in her throat. "Who is...what...?"

A raven-haired head ducked in under the door frame. "Sup?" The stranger's dark eyes gleamed like cold coals. Another eye gazed out from her chest—a great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame. Sanae winced when she saw it.

With considerable difficulty, the assistant squeezed into the room, but her wings complicated the process. Both taller than she by half, the big black feathered appendages scrunched in and then snapped out, scattering globes and books and cat skeletons.

The oaf waved her cannon at Sanae. "Who's this?"

"Our specimen," Rikako replied, momentary disappointment vanishing in an avalanche of glee. She regarded Sanae. "Oh, right, introductions. This, um, is my assistant, Okuu. Now, it would easy to judge by appearances, but truly, you MUST hear her theories on nuclear fusion! Simply staggering implications. How probability increases substantially providing for the presence of what we like to call EAEE's, Effervescent Adolescent Evanescent Essences. Or, the sound most people make when they've seen a ghost. Tee-hee, our little joke. You see, by harvesting..."

The lab assistant locked eyes with Sanae. "Name's Utsuho," the hell-raven growled, glaring down at Sanae. "Don't you forget it."

Sanae swallowed, nodding rapidly. This monstrous girl didn't seem capable of spelling her name, let alone harnessing the quantum mysteries. But who was Sanae to argue?

A specimen, right. Best remedy that misnomer.

Unconscious guards littered the corridor outside the lab. "Caught the rats snooping again," Utsuho grunted. "Went down easy."

"Oh dear," said Rikako, fretting and rubbing her hands. "We should probably send them to the decontamination chambers before their organs liquefy from radioactive exposure." She beamed at Sanae. "But it can wait. Are you ready to get started?"

"Er," Sanae began, "for what?"

"Why, the tests, of course!"

Rikako clasped Sanae's hand, her grip damp and loose but warm. "You're our first 'real' subject," Rikako breathed. "We'd be delighted to find out what you can do!"

Utsuho harrumphed and cocked her arm-cannon. "When do we get to test her melting point?"

As easily as that, Sanae's good feelings evaporated. She edged toward the ruins of the door, face plastered with a painful smile. "Silly me," she laughed awkwardly, "there must be some mistake. Wrong room. Pretty sure I'm slated for the totally-don't-melt-me-down project. Well, good luck procuring a willing test subject, I guess I'd better get g—"

The hell-raven loomed in front of her. Hand on her hip, cannon pointed at Sanae's forehead. "Nope," Utsuho says, "no mistake. You stay."

Sanae sank.

Then she bolted.

With a guttural roar, Utsuho swung her arm-cannon around—she demolished a row of beakers, shattered a shelf, spilled bottles of who-knows-what to spark and sizzle on the linoleum. But she missed; Sanae ran.

"Get back here!" Utsuho thundered, ineffectually. Somewhat more effectually, she fired the cannon. The universe's most controlled nuclear explosion only took out the wall—the ceiling caved, sealing off the space. And Sanae was trapped against a wall of rubble.

Utsuho advanced. Her cannon whined as it primed for another shot.

"My books!" Rikako wailed, clutching her face. "All my graduate research!"

Utsuho leveled her cannon—Sanae readied to run again.

Boom, went the filing cabinet—scorched paper fluttered up like a flock of startled butterflies. Boom, went the scale model of the solar system—solar supernova, four billion years early. Boom, went the table Sanae overturned to protect herself, with a shower of glass and noxious chemicals and splintered wood. Boom, and another tiny sun erupted from Utsuho's arm-cannon and exploded with spectacular grace, resulting in gratuitous destruction. Boom, boom.

Sanae scrabbled for an exit, with no success. In mortal peril, she found the lab smaller than it seemed at first. Door blocked. No windows to crash through. Vent's too high. Then...what? No time, no time...

A hot rod jammed into her back—the cannon pressed against her skin. "Game over," said Utsuho. "Better luck next time." The cannon charged.

It fired—

"No, no, no!"

—straight into the ceiling.

Dust, not death, plonked down on Sanae's head. Ears ringing, head throbbing, she dared to open her eyes.

Rikako had tackled her assistant from behind, forcing the arm-cannon to point upward. For some reason, Utsuho neglected to fight back. Must have been the 120 cc's of sedative pumping into her blood from the hypodermic needle Rikako jabbed in her neck. Utsuho staggered like a drunk dinosaur.

"Girls shouldn't do these things," Rikako scolded, wagging her finger. "Now, you see, Okuu, you should really—"

The cannon whacked Rikako square between the eyes. The glasses cracked; her eyes rolled back. The doctor slumped and dropped.

Though muzzy from the drugs, Utsuho managed to level her loose cannon at Sanae. The shrine maiden scooted back; the hell-raven grinned stupidly. "Let's do an ex-per-i-ment," Utsuho slurred. "I blast you, you turn to goo, and I look at what color your puddle is. Ready? One..."

An explosion from the wall of rubble.

Shrapnel showered the lab, shattering any glass still miraculously unbroken.

Utsuho rolled her eyes. "NOW what?" She turned to look.

A burst of light.

Shining bullets shot from the cloud of dust and caught Utsuho in the face, chest, chest-eye. When she still didn't go down, another barrage followed. Given enough, she collapsed in a hulking heap.

Sanae stared, feeling like she didn't do much this chapter.

A shape strolled out into the flickering light—cool, elegant, and limping terribly. It was Yukari, her dress tattered, her forehead leaking a trickle of blood. She dabbed daintily at the wound with a kerchief.

"Let's not dawdle," Yukari said to Sanae. She rapped her parasol, or rather its sooty skeleton. "It seems the good Doctor was not expecting our visit, and has gone out of her way to make us feel welcome." Where another may have lent her a hand, Yukari turned up her chin. "Can you stand?"

Sanae did, and she stood on her own.

Together they left.


	10. Stage 3-C: (The Lake)

The hot thick wave rolled over her, and she sank.

Splashing, thrashing, she burst to the surface, sucking in air. Her eyes stung; her hair hung in sticky clumps; her clothes clung to her skin.

Mokou blinked, and blinked, until she could finally see again. Amid a haze of mist, she found she floated in a vast red pool. She could not see the sky, nor the shoreline, but only a faint glow deep below. Red reflections danced on the jagged ceiling.

A cave?

Mokou swam with cautious strokes, but the pool resisted—it was thicker than water. Something nagged her about the smell. About the viscous liquid oozing into her ears and nose and mouth. The wet warmth seeping into her bones...

Her gut lurched.

_This is blood_.

She recoiled, gasping in disgust. She flailed but failed to keep afloat. Mokou's choked cries echoed in the dark. Tiring, she dipped and slipped into the sea of horrors...

"Whee!"

A loud splash. Another wave slapped her face. Mokou surged out of the hot red depths, dripping, gasping.

"Who's there?" she snapped, but soon felt rather stupid.

"Me, silly. Who do you think?"

Princess Kaguya bobbed elegantly in the lake of blood, her charms hardly tarnished by her being thoroughly drenched. She wore the unkempt look well, with quiet stubborn dignity, as if daring _anyone_ to say_ anything_. They didn't.

So Mokou dunked her.

Burbling, gurgling, the princess clawed back to the surface, where she gulped great lungfuls of air. Her black eyes burned—she shoved Mokou. "You...blithering fool!" she spluttered. "What do you think you're doing? I might have died!"

"Oh, you didn't? Let's try again."

She did.

The second time, Mokou held Kaguya under; the princess flailed but failed to escape. Brute strength was never Kaguya's...well, _strength_. She went down easily. Now, coming up was the hard part.

After the fifth drowning or so, Mokou let Kaguya return to the surface. Neither one said a word. They were both drenched in blood. They coughed and spluttered, snorting blood out their noses, spitting it out of their mouths. Scrubbing it from their tongues.

"All right," Mokou managed, ignoring the tickle in her throat from the fluid clogging her lungs, "fun's over. Let's figure out where in the hell we are. Lake of blood, which circle's that? Was never that into Dante." She paused. "Hey. Kaguya? Hey, princess, wake up!"

Kaguya didn't answer. She stared, trembling, at her bloodstained hands. Her lips moved but formed no sound.

"Hey," Mokou said, "you okay?" Not that she cared. It was the Right Thing To Say.

There was a crazed gleam in Kaguya's eye. Her fingers twitched. "Once more."

She lunged and plunged back into the blood, throttling Mokou.

A while later, they rose from their last dive, soaked to the skin and mildly embarrassed.

"Fine, then," Kaguya said loudly, avoiding Mokou's eyes. She glanced around. "This does not look like hell."  
"Trapped here with you? I beg to differ."

"Quiet, illiterate dolt. What I mean is, I've heard of this place. A lake of blood, located at the heart of a mountain." She fell silent. The waves lapped lazily at their bobbing bodies.

"That raises more questions than it answers, princess."

"Indeed. How does the lake keep warm, for instance? That act alone must expend a tremendous amount of energy. And why hasn't the blood clotted? Does it contain platelets? leukocytes? foreign bacteria? cholesterol deposits? Are the cells oxygenated or not? Shouldn't blood dry, or crust, or flake?"

Mokou arched an eyebrow. "You must be tons of fun at parties."

"I entertain myself."

Kaguya swept her gaze over the whole lake, settling on Mokou. "I see no way out," she declared. "We'll have to dive."

"Die?" Mokou repeated, aghast.

"That too, probably."

"What are you—"

"We have no place else to go but down. Unless you happen to see an emergency exit sign, our only lead is below us." The princess coughed. "Ahem. That is, unless you have a better plan."

Mokou frowned. She sure as hell didn't have a better plan, but that didn't mean she had to like Kaguya's. Still, Mokou's arms and legs were getting sore from treading w— blood.

One thought _did _spring into her head. The only way to make this situation worse. "We can't get separated," Mokou said, "or who knows where we'll end up." She grudgingly grumbled the rest: "We'll have to tie ourselves together."

That earned a wan smile from Kaguya. "Allow me."

Was this girl ever surprised?  
Kaguya tugged on the sash of her kimono. The silk strip slipped out of its knot, and the lapels spread open, revealing—Mokou swallowed—a tight-wound sarashi, stained red. "Really," Kaguya said, proffering the strip of silk, "stop staring. What sort of person do you take me for?"

"Think of all the swear words you know..."

"Yes?"

"Then add the rest."

The princess politely refrained from chuckling. She clasped Mokou's hand, wrapping the sash around her right and Mokou's left. She tied the knot, which she tightened with her teeth. A grin flitted on her face. "In some cultures, you know, this union is symbolic of—"

The rest came out as bubbles. Mostly because Mokou yanked Kaguya straight down, swimming with unflinching vigor.

Mokou held her breath and shut her eyes, since she couldn't see through this thick soup anyhow. But she saw the light. Its glow pulsed behind her eyelids. Even blind, unable to tell up from down, Mokou could follow the light.

Kaguya squeezed her hand—once, twice. Mokou jerked her arm, hampered somewhat by the fluid resistance.

The lake went down, down, down.

Soon Mokou's lungs began to burn. She craved air. Her strokes grew fewer and feebler, her arms and legs heavier. Only her head felt light. Spots flashed behind her eyelids. The weight of tons of blood crushed above her, pushed her further, further down. Her heart thudded, thundering in her chest, screaming for release—Mokou opened her mouth to scream, then...

A gargling gasp. Kaguya. The princess twisted, twitched, fell still. She'd drowned first.

Mokou wanted to laugh—Ha, I win.

But she felt so tired...

Her mind crawled back from oblivion into the soggy lump of meat it called a body. How many times had she died? Two? Twelve? Twenty? Thoughts, shadows of sensation, flickered in her strangled brain. Back to the black...

She thought of Kurumi, melting in the sun. Her body burning away faster than it grew back. So many deaths. Ceaseless suffering. ...Prometheus?

The light shone brighter. Or was that in her mind? Without air, her body's senses couldn't function. Her consciousness clung stubbornly to a worthless receptacle.

Would she remain alive as pulp at the bottom of a deep red sea? Would she remember who she was, what had brought her to endless millennia of blind torment?

Kaguya Houraisen.

Silent stones whirling in the black of space...

Then the weight lifted.

Mokou tumbled through air and flopped on a rock.

Limp and damp as a sopping rag, she hacked and coughed, spewing out the blood that didn't belong. "Lucky to be alive" didn't begin to describe how she felt.

She tried to touch her face—dead weight held her back.

Oh, right. Her.

Not _that _lucky, then.

Kaguya came to in a similar fashion. Coughing, hacking, but with more poise. With the first breaths from her flushed lungs, she murmured, "Where are we?"

Mokou sighed. "I've got to stop letting you pick where we go next. We've just plopped from one place we don't know to another."

"I call that progress."

Though the dark around them seemed to stretch into infinity, their voices didn't echo. The black drank any sound that ventured to the verge of unreality. Mokou shuddered at the thought.

"Did you hear me, Mokou?"

"Eh? You say something important?"

"No, I—"

"Then shut up."

With the considerable challenge of only one free hand, Mokou peeled off her shirt and wrung it out. Blood splattered on the flat black floor, but faintly. Mokou's shirt hung in tatters. Sighing, she wrapped the bloodstained rags around her breasts, ripping a strip to tie it tight. Might as well give Kaguya something to think about.

Between Mokou's torn clothes and Kaguya's loose kimono, they looked like a couple of thugs.

"I've decided," Mokou said at last. "This can't be hell. Definitely not. A lake of fire would be an improvement. We passed from a lake of boiling blood into this damn boring hole. Stuck in limbo with your worst enemy—we're in the hell of hells."

For once, Kaguya lacked a witty retort. "Mokou..."  
"What?"

"Has that mansion always been there?"

Mokou snapped to look.

And there it loomed.

An old house, big and bold, hovered in the silent sea of black. Candlelight flickered in the windows; a black-and-blue checkerboard walkway sprawled from the lavish front steps.

Kaguya tipped her head. "Curiouser and curiouser."

"Now don't you start that ag—"

A gleam sliced through the dark. No, never mind. It was a flying scythe, spinning a hand-span from Mokou's head before arcing back around, back into its master's grasp.

Bracing herself, Mokou ducked aside...only Kaguya did that too, in the opposite direction. The knot held them fast—they went nowhere.

"Oh? Visitors! Mistress will be so pleased. We don't get many visitors."

A small blonde girl descended the front steps. In her arms she cradled a crooked scythe, stroking the shaft, tracing a finger along the blade. She smiled. "Pleased to meet you. I'm El—"

Her time slowed; a blast of flame consumed her.

"More gatekeepers," Mokou muttered. "Serves her right."

Kaguya giggled. "She didn't last nearly as long as the last one."

The smoke cleared...

"That was rude..."

The girl with the scythe was still there.

Mokou gaped, Kaguya gasped—discreetly, of course.

Dusting herself off, the girl continued, "Let's try that again. Hello, I"m Elly. Pleased to meet you." She raised her scythe menacingly, but then slung it across her shoulders.

"Mokou," Kaguya breathed, "look at the thing in her hand. Look at it!"

The scythe. The darkness. The poison-tinted politeness. It all made sense.

"I knew it," Mokoku groaned. "We're in hell."

Elly blinked. "Eh? Hell? What gave you that idea?"

"I'll handle this one," Mokou murmured to Kaguya. Then she addressed the stranger: "Gee, I dunno. Was it the portal, the dark decor, the lake of blood? A few subtle clues. It started with the vampire guardian, and now a nice little girl with a scythe. The Grim Reaper herself, come to smooth-talk our souls into eternal suffering."

Mokou stopped. Elly was giggling.

"Grim Reaper?" she laughed. "I wish! If only I hadn't flunked the entrance exam."

Elly swung out her scythe, then tossed it from hand to hand. "Kurumi said all that, huh? She wasn't too far off. This place isn't hell, but on slow days, you'd never know the difference." She brandished her scythe; the blade _smiled_. "So," she said slowly, "mind telling me who you morons are?"

"Kaguya Houraisen, princess of the moon!" Kaguya blurted, sweating. "W-we request an audience with your mistress! Under her protection! Rules of parley—all those things!"

"Good. And the other one?"

"Fujiwara no Mokou," said Mokou. She scratched her neck. "What she said. Except for the princess part. I'm just me, mostly."

"Marvelous," said Elly, grinning. "Congratulations. You're the first to make it down here since...well, the last people who made it down here. A witch and a shrine maiden. Maybe you've heard of them."

"The possibility exists," Kaguya said carefully.

Mokou stuffed her hands in her pockets. More breezy than usual, since Kurumi's kick sliced open a pant leg, rendering the pocket-stuffing useless. She flexed her fingers instead. She'd kill for a cigarette. Preferably someone she knew.

"We're looking for Mima," Mokou said flatly. "You heard of her down here?"

Face blank, Elly replied, "You'd have to ask my mistress. Which you won't get to, since I happen to be standing in the way." She regarded Mokou. "I'm curious. Assuming there's even the slimmest chance I know or know of this Mima, I must ask: what do you expect to do once you find her?"

"Beat the crap out of her."

"Ah."

Elly sighed and leaned her scythe over her shoulder. "Sorry, but I can't let you go by."

"Why not?" Mokou snapped. Her lungs itched for a cool, smooth smoke.

"Policy," Elly replied, as if that actually meant anything. "However..."

The gatekeeper broke out in a wicked smile. "I'll let you go by if you can beat me. Professional courtesy, you understand. If you lose, you must go back to the beginning. Also professional courtesy." Her scythe sang as it idly sliced the air. Elly admired it awhile. "So, how 'bout it? You wanna—"

Mokou engulfed the girl in flame.

Again, Elly emerged unscathed.

"You're persistent," she said. "Doing the same thing over and over, expecting things will change if you just try hard enough. You know what else works that way?" Elly swung and flung the scythe. "Insanity!"

The scythe spun toward Mokou, and Mokou spun as well—the scythe sliced through two half-materialized Yin-Yang Orbs, into a rather surprised princess. She died instantly.

But not for long.

When Kaguya woke up, her first task in life was to smack Mokou upside the head.

"What was that for?" she snapped. She wrenched the scythe out of her chest and flung it on the floor. "What would you have done if I'd _died_?"

"You mean for good?"  
"For good!"

"...Dance a jig, probably."

"What! You uncouth— Ha. You, dance. I'd very much like to see that."

"Somehow I think you'd be too dead to care."

"Um..." Elly tried to interject, but it had no effect on the squabblers. Like an old married couple. Shouting in each other's faces, threatening murder with every other breath.

Shrugging, Elly beckoned back her scythe. At her behest, it scraped on the floor and flew back to Elly's open hand.

"Um!" Elly tried again, louder. Again, no good. "Excuse me...?" Not one word passed her way. Lacking another option, she threw her scythe again. She whispered the prayer, "Please die without a fuss."

Whistling through the air, the scythe whirled toward Mokou and Kaguya...

The targets turned as one.

"YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!"

Most improbably, they chose to point at the same time. Using the hands tied together. The scythe slashed the sash, and the knot split. Mokou and Kaguya stood dumbly for a moment, then shifted apart.

It bothered Elly to have them looking at her like that. So...expectantly.

The scythe whirled around on its return trip.

Mokou snatched the scythe out of the air—it hauled her along.

Propelled by the scythe's momentum, Mokou launched at Elly. The small girl hurtled closer, closer, until Elly's eyes had grown quite big with surprise.

Mokou swung the scythe.

She bonked the gatekeeper over the head with her own stick.

Elly fell, dazed, dizzy, with a bad case of the unconscious.

"And that, princess," Mokou said, "is what you call a bloodless alternative. Take notes." After examining the scythe, she unceremoniously tossed it into a bush. "Er, mostly bloodless."

Kaguya huffed. Not speaking to Mokou, she stormed toward the house.

Before she followed, Mokou waited. "One more thing..."

Mokou made sure to kick the snoozing body. "With enough time,_ persistence pays off_. And I've got all the time in the world."

* * *

**A/N**: _Chapters posted in the right order, huzzah!__  
_

_While writing M&K's synchronized swimming routine of death, it struck me how much drowning occurs in these stories. God of the Gaps (Requiem), the Eva piece (Regicide), the Double Dealing Character vignette, and now this. (Patterns crop up for every writer, I suppose.) Currently, this writer seems to be drowning in procrastination. Maybe he'll jerk back to life on his own, or perhaps he needs a jolt of lighting to do the trick. Or caffeine. A lazy writer's best friend, caffeine. *Slurp*_


	11. Stage 4-A: (Outside Pandaemonium)

Aya fled

She ran, she flew. She ran when too tired to fly, flew when too tired to run. When her whole body devolved into one big ache, she half-walked, half-stumbled. The crystalline forest had spread into a vast red field, shrouded in mist. The noxious miasma would instantly kill a human being. Aya proceeded, ignorant of this fact.

Where was she going? Not even she knew.

Away. Yes, away. Out of Makai, out of the insanity the witch had plunged her into. Back to her double life.

If only she could find the way out.

Exhausted, Aya stopped, resting her hands on her knees. She dragged ragged breaths from her lungs.

Nothing around but mist, everywhere she looked.

Aya sighed and looked down. She was almost tempted to start digging.

It came swift and soundless. A hand clapped over her mouth, an arm hooked around her stomach.

"Don't move, idiot," a voice hissed. "Don't move, don't breathe, don't do anything. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. Just...listen."

Aya listened.

"I'm going to let you go now. You'll have to promise not to run for your thrice-damned life. Sound good? Nod your head if you understand."

Aya nodded, nodded, nodded vigorously.

"Good. I'm letting go."

The arm and hand retracted. Aya sucked in a bellyful of good unclean Makai air. She spun around.

"Marisa?"

The witch glared through the miasma. "You really are an idiot, you know that?"

"How did you catch—" Aya's breath caught. "Er, how did you get away?" She glanced around nervously. Ashamed, she scratched her head. "I didn't mean to leave you hanging like that. I thought you had everything under control."

"Of course," Marisa said sweetly, teeth clenched. "Under control." She spat on the ground. "You're lucky you're right.

"The idiots in charge here sent even bigger idiots after us. They're probably still bickering."

Marisa frowned at the miasma surrounding them. "If not for this mist, you'd have been caught ages ago." She raised her fist. "Let's make this go away." She swung her arm downward and dismissed the mist. On the horizon, the palace of glass glowed with ethereal brilliance.

"Pandaemonium," Marisa muttered, uttering the name like a curse. "Let's go. Now that they know we're here, we mustn't keep them waiting."

She settled into a brisk stride, not waiting for Aya to follow her. The mist rolled back in Marisa's wake—Aya scrambled to stay where she could see.

The witch's mood hadn't improved, that Aya could see clearly. If anything, she'd gotten worse as she neared the focus of her hate. She moved in a straight line, blind to all else. Revenge was a scary thing.

"Are you really going to go through with it?" Aya said. "Avenge the shrine maiden?"

The witch grunted. "I've gone this far. What choice do I have?"

"Well, we could do what I was doing before, which was leg it in the complete opposite dire—"

"Rhetorical question, Aya. Shut up."

"Sorry."

Marisa looked up. "Here we are. Shinki's place."

The palace of glass was even more impressive up close, where Aya could see the patterns etched into the gates, the smoky haze of miasma refracted through the curtain walls as clear as crystal. The bored guard leaning back against the—

Oh gods, not again.

Marisa's response to this unfortunate development was absurdly cheerful. She waved and shouted, "Hey, Yumeko! Been a while, hasn't it?"

The guard looked up. With her slitted yellow eyes and wavy yellow hair, Yumeko resembled yet another copy of Marisa. The red dress and white apron were different, as was her most unwelcoming smile.

"Oh gods, not again," she muttered, folding her arms. "What do you want _this _time?"

"Knock-knock," Marisa replied cheerily, "is your mistress home?"

"Couldn't say. Where's yours?"

"Aren't you clever. Alice isn't here, if that's what you're asking."

"Rhetorical question, witch." She narrowed her eyes even more, an impressive accomplishment. "You planning on leaving, or will I have to throw you off the battlements again?"

"Again?" Marisa repeated, laughing. "I just got here! Don't you want to catch up on the good old days?"

"There weren't any good old days—just days."

"C'mon. Where's your sense of nostalgia?"

"On vacation with my sense of wonder and sense of humor. Anything else you want to know?"

Marisa's grin curdled. "Can't you give us even a little—"

"No. Skedaddle."

The witch wouldn't quit, but simply stood there, staring.

After the better part of a minute, Yumeko broke out into a sigh. "All right, I'll bite. What do you want?"

Brightening considerably, Marisa replied, "Thought I told you already. We're here to see your mistress, on private business."

Yumeko could arch an eyebrow like an expert. "We?"

Hesitantly, Aya waved.

"I picked up a straggler on the way her," Marisa said casually, with a toss of her bangs. "Poor thing. Clung to me like a burr. Now there's no getting rid of her."

"Indeed," Yumeko said, eyes dull. "You were always such a master at picking up strange girls. Quite the romantic."

Marisa laughed. She patted Aya's head. "Actually, I learned it all from her," she said, not untruthfully.

Aya flushed crimson. What might have been envy flitted over Yumeko's face, but the bland blank mask soon resumed.

After remarkably little deliberation, the guard said, "Can't let you through. Not sorry, either."

"Oh." Marisa sighed. She tapped her chin thoughtfully, then broke out in a sly leer. "Any chance I could...convince you otherwise?"

The guard stiffened. "Nope."

"Bribe?"

"No."

"Coin toss?"

"No."

"Share your bunk?"

"NO."

"Punch in the face?"

"N...what—"

Marisa barreled at Yumeko before the guard could react. But she did anyway—Yumeko caught the witch's flying fist by the wrist before the blow collided with her nose.

Marisa grinned. She spread her fingers.

A Master Spark exploded in Yumeko's face.

The guard staggered back, screaming, swearing. She'd somehow shut her eyes in time, leaving two welts swelling around the sockets—she looked like a bruised raccoon. Blood trickled from her nostrils.

"Aha!" Marisa teased, "The covert pervert shows herself at last!" Aya resisted a snigger.

Yumeko wasn't laughing. She trembled with shame and rage. "You've made a terrible mistake," she said, and repeated, "terrible." Her hands vanished—they plunged into a rift in time and space, and drew out...

Marisa's smile died. She shouted, "Dodge!"

Aya and Marisa scattered—flying blades whistled past them.

"Nice knives!" Marisa laughed, jeering. "Poky in every sense of the word!"

Aya gulped. Not knives. SWORDS.

Lip curled in a snarl, Yumeko pulled twin swords quite literally out of thin air. Slim and straight and sharp, as long as her arm, the swords sang when Yumeko clanged them together. "Come, witch," she said dully. "Let's get this over with."

Smirking, Marisa doffed her hat—out dropped her broomstick. "Not today!" she called. As she straddled the shaft and took flight, the witch called to Aya, "Don't get left behind, crow! Miss Poky means business!"

Yumeko leveled her swords and charged.

Fretting, frittering away her spare seconds, Aya scrambled to unfurl her wings. She beat the black bulks furiously, ascending awkwardly. Yumeko slashed at Aya's swinging feet, but Aya left the guard on the ground, brows creased, swords crossed.

From a certain height Aya could peer over into the crystal castle's courtyard. A stupidly obvious thought struck her. "Hey, why don't we just FLY over the gate?" she said, and did so. As a result, she smacked into an invisible wall, not unlike a bird crashing into a window. She recovered, dazed and dizzy. The air rippled where she'd hit—crystal lattice glittered into existence. "That's cheating," Aya moaned, rubbing her head. She flew higher, but no matter how high she flew, the crystal wall would rise and materialize. "A cheap cheat," she muttered, and chanced to glanced down in time.

Three swords shot straight up at her.

Aya jerked back, gasping—the swords sliced the air a hand-span from her face. But they missed. Aya sighed with relief, congratulating herself on such a narrow escape.

The same swords nearly skewered her on the way down.

Deciding by her conduct that Aya wasn't much of a threat, Yumeko switched her focus to Marisa. The witch was performing corkscrews, scrawling obscene messages in the clouds.

Yumeko seethed. With a thought and a wave, she tore wounds in reality; out shot swords falling at terminal velocity in whatever direction she wanted. An awesome power. Yet, for Marisa, strangely familiar.

Far enough away, Marisa could dodge the flying swords with ease. They flew in straight lines—easy enough to predict. Just like...

"You remind me of someone," Marisa remarked, barely loud enough for Yumeko to overhear. "A maid. Powers like yours—lots of sharp objects flying every which way. Personality's close—moody, brooding, worryingly devoted to her mistress. Can't think of her name though. Starts with an S, I think. Sara...Shana...Shanghai...Shangri-La?"

A near-miss cut her off, but fortunately didn't cut off anything important. The witch held on tight to her hat, ready for anything.

Dodging the swords became a game. Marisa watched where the portals appeared, then piloted her broomstick accordingly. The swords came—left right, before, behind, below, above. She pitched and yawed, swooped and dove. Up, up, down, down, right, left, right, left... It was fun.

"Kinda fun, isn't it?" Marisa called to Aya, who struggled to swerve around even the slowest swords.

"Once you get past the life-endangering aspect, YES, it's a rollicking good time!" Aya retorted, reddening. Then, in another act of life-altering looking around, she happened to glance up. Her jaw dropped. "Uh...Marisa...?"

The witch swirled by, swords zipping by all around her. She hadn't heard Aya. She didn't notice anything was amiss until she fell under shadow. Then she too looked up. "Wha? ...Oh."

Plummeting from a pitch-black sky, thick as a flash flood, were swords. Thousands of swords. A cloud of falling blades, stretching from the palace wall to the red fields.

A wall of death.

Falling toward them.

"Fly!" Marisa cried, suddenly frantic. She jerked her broomstick to point virtually vertical, straight down.

Aya tucked back her wings, streamlining her body. She dove down, down, down toward the ground...

Where Yumeko waited, with crossed blades and a sickly smile.

Marisa backed up her broom—it bucked and buckled. "It's a trap!" the witch shouted, stopping Aya in time.

Marisa deliberated for a split second. Then, muttering miserably, she charged straight up. Toward the downpour of swords.

"What are you DOING?!" Aya cried, but her words were lost to the wind. Though befuddled, she flapped after the witch.

"Stay close!" Marisa called. She braced herself, scowling up at the oncoming storm. The blades crashed like thunder, flashed like lightning. Closer...closer...

"Now! To me!"

As the storm of swords lashed toward her, Marisa punched through the wall with a blast of Master Spark. Clear sky flashed in the gap.

With safety in sight, Marisa cackled gleefully. But where was—

"Aya?"

The tengu lagged, her weary wings beating furiously to keep up with the witch's broom. Not enough.

Marisa's pulse thumped in her ears.

Above, the clear sky shone invitingly; below, Aya struggled.

Marisa cursed herself. She swooped down after Aya—sword-tips nipped at the witch's heels.

Relief flooded Aya's face when she saw Marisa returning for her. She'd even reached the skirts of the safe zone...when a falling sword pierced her wing. Aya gasped—she crimped, cramped, crumpled.

Ultimately, she plummeted.

Falling...falling...

Her vision faded to black.

Falling to her death, she thought, _This is how it ends_. Her arms and legs splayed uselessly. She prepared for the inevitable...

"Gotcha!"

The witch snatched Aya by the hand, hauling her onto her broom. Aya hung and clung there, blinking away the shock.

"Don't get too comfortable," Marisa snapped to her startled passenger. "Fun's just getting started!" The witch indicated her chest. "Grab hold!"

Aya's eyes bulged, but she did as she was told. At least one of them would die happy.

Thousands of swords rattled above their heads, sounding rather like an enraged swarm of steel bees.

"Here it comes!" Marisa cried. Aya cringed.

The storm hit.

Swords drove down like heavy rain, with Marisa weaving between the streams. The rumors were true: she really could dodge rain. Aya screamed incessantly. A close save shaved brushes from the broom's whisk; another struck and stuck in Marisa's hat, sending it tumbling into space.

Hair waving wildly, Marisa wound through the cascading blades. She ducked, slunk, swung around the shimmering sheets of steel.

Aya squawked—one sword thrust through the broom, an inch from her crotch. The old wood split and splintered, but the broom held together by sheer force of will. With similar tenacity, Aya clung to Marisa, very nearly choking the life out of her.

By now the broom began a gradual, irreversible descent.

"We're hit!" Aya cried.

"No shit!" Marisa replied.

Slowly, terribly, the broom grew slack and sluggish. It sloped downward on a gentle incline, with Marisa guiding its painfully slow fall. Rather than worry about the sudden stop at the bottom, Marisa shot more swords out of the air before they riddled the doomed broom's occupants.

The storm of swords thinned, then dissipated.

About six feet off the ground, the broom crawled to a halt.

Blades littered the red field. Some stuck upright, others spread in haphazard heaps around the ground.

Yumeko waited amid the fallen armory, chin in her hand, swords stuck in the ground.

"She's strong," Marisa murmured. Now Aya felt she had reason to panic: a witch had complimented an opponent.

The guard regarded them with disdain. "What, not dead yet?" she droned. A blip of admiration flickered on her features. "And to think I used my super-secret forbidden ultimate attack, too." She sighed with theatrically belabored patience. "All right, fun's over. Give me some highly quotable last words before I send you to the mysterious beyond."

"I had nothing to do with it, any of it!" Aya declared, having planned her last words years in advance; meanwhile Marisa opted for the marginally more memorable, "Look out behind you."

Against all odds, Yumeko turned around—flying blades clanged into her twin swords, which she'd swung to block. She scanned the battlefield for her unseen opponent. "Where are you? Show yourself!" she said, as if that would work.

It did. A shadowy figure emerged from the mist. Pocketwatch clutched in one hand, fistful of knives in the other. A tattered black dress flapping in unseen winds. Face drawn, not smiling.

"Sakuya!" Marisa exclaimed, snapping her fingers. "That was the name! Sakuya! How could I forget someone so obvious?"

Yumeko tensed. She opened more rifts. Swords shot out—Aya cried out.

The shadowy figure blurred. An instant later, the swords clattered to join the others on the ground.

"So it IS you," Yumeko murmured. "Everyone's favorite time-stopping, knife-throwing ninja maid. My copycat."

Sakuya spoke slowly, clearly. "I'm here to deliver a warning: give up. The resistance is already here in Makai. I'm their scout, the first of many others. Surrender or die."

Marisa nudged Aya in the ribs. "See? Told you we'd win!" Aya said nothing, but rubbed her ribs where she'd been poked. She climbed off the broom and landed awkwardly on a shifting pile of swords, wincing from her wounded wing.

"Give up?" Yumeko chuckled bleakly. She stared at her swords, full of longing. "If only my mistress knew those words."

"I understand the sentiment," Sakuya said, "But I won't bend. The offer stands as is."

The guard sighed. "Real sorry to hear that. Don't think I'll be able to bend either."

"Is that so. How sad. I was beginning to like you." Sakuya cocked her knives, then cocked her head. "Give my love to Her Majesty Mima...in hell."

Yumeko laughed. "No, no, no. You've got it all wrong." She swept her gaze over Sakuya, Marisa, Aya. Even when totally surrounded, Yumeko shone with reluctant confidence. "You'll never beat me. You can't. Why, you fall for the stupidest tricks.

"For example, while we've been talking away, you've all dropped your guard."

Sakuya steeled herself, but too late.

A sword flew out of nowhere and plunged into Marisa's heart. The witch was flung from her broom—laughter died in her eyes. The other portal yawned; Marisa vanished into the void, swallowed in shadow.

Then all was silent.

An icicle of dread pierced Aya. She swayed, dazed, frozen in horror. Eyes wide, Sakuya moved her lips in a wordless prayer.

"And let that be a lesson," said Yumeko, defiling the silence. "As with women, a mere thousand could not stop her...but all it took was one."

Aya's eyes burned. Her vision blurred. What...what was...

"You KILLED HER!" Aya cried, raising her fists, hobbling after Yumeko. "You killed her! You killed her! I'm gonna kill y—"

The guard glared.

Aya froze.

A dozen swords hurtled toward her head.

And then, the whole world froze. The swords stopped a few feet from her face. Amazed, Aya put out her finger to touch the tip of a blade.

"You don't want to do that."

A voice—low, grim, haunted.

Sakuya had a hand on Aya's shoulder, binding her to this timeless world. From the maid's other hand, the pocketwatch dangled, jangled.

Sakuya pulled Aya close, out of the way of the blades. "Listen," she said, desperation thick on her breath. "There's not much time—of all people, I should know. You must get to Shinki. Speak to her. Tell her how much the world outside has suffered, how much _we've_ suffered. Tell her what's happened to Gensokyo. Plead with her to extend a helping hand."

"But I—"

"No time!"

Sakuya's eyes brimmed with unspeakable heartache. "Please." She looked to the witch's broom, splintered by swords, shivered into slivers. "Don't let her death have been in vain."

She drifted away.

The world unfroze. Aya fell where Sakuya had pushed her, and she heard Yumeko's halfhearted taunts, the squeal of steel on steel.

"Don't you people ever learn?" Yumeko was saying, outside Aya's line of sight. "Doesn't matter how hard you try, the result's the same—you'll fail, as you always have. What's the definition of insanity, again?"

"I will not lose," Sakuya said. "I cannot. As I held her hand and watched my Lady die, I promised I would never lose again!"

"How sweet," Yumeko sneered. "I have thousands of swords at my command. You have kitchen knives. How do you expect to win? Pluck, or dumb luck?"

"Neither," Sakuya said. "Look around. You've given me all the blades I need!"

They clashed together...

Not watching the battle, Aya bolted. She saw nothing but the wall of crystal, the sheer see-through barrier. She ran away. It was all she was good for.

She ran away...into the wall.

The crystal rippled—

like swimming in thick viscous liquid—

and the palace of glass accepted her.

She passed through.


	12. Stage 4-B: (The Ship)

**A/N**: _Even with all the fabulous Freudian subtext of Marisa's epic death, what a scene it was. Gobs of good fun all around. Gonna miss her voice, especially when she turns up the charm. As for Sakuya vs. Yumeko...that's the one best fight scene you'll never get to read. (Not in this story, at least. Whatever your imaginations can cook up is sixty-six sextillion times better than what my meager word processor can withstand.) And now, to the fate of the shrine maiden's other avenger... _

* * *

When Sanae opened the door to the innermost room of the facility and peered inside, she could not believe her eyes. "Yukari...what is this?"

"New magic," Yukari replied, "from far beyond the Border. Magic so sufficiently dissected it is indistinguishable from science."

Sanae crept through the portal, cold wind lapping at her face.

A crisp dark night stretched into infinity. Scraps of clouds blotted out the stars; the breeze whispered through the grass, wailed through the massive standing stones that dotted the plain.

Sanae breathed, "It's...it's..."

"Beautiful?" Yukari chuckled. "Shocking? Mind-boggling? That and more."

"It's...bigger on the inside!"

Yukari looked at Sanae strangely, then sighed. "Yes, that too. Most visitors seem to notice that one first."

"But not even the whole building is this big!" Sanae cried, marveling. "What...how did they—"

"Miracle of science," Yukari said briskly, brusquely. Her dress swirled as she swiveled forward. "Shall we go?"

Though Sanae wanted to wonder at this impossible night, she knew they must go on. She did, although reluctantly.

A path began under a carved arch of solid stone, and wound around the many monoliths over the field. The worn stones murmured secrets of a bygone time.

Sanae started—Yukari had tapped her shoulder, breaking her out of her reverie.

"What do you want?" Sanae snapped, harsher than she'd intended. Her patience was waning from waiting; whatever Yukari had to show her, it'd better be good.

"We're not alone," Yukari said softly, scanning the field. Suffocating darkness suffused the space around them.

"Is that so," Sanae said. She put her hands on her hips. "I'm tired of waiting, Yukari. You've owed me an explanation from the instant you stopped by my shrine. In case you haven't noticed, since then, I've been chased, assaulted, shot at, almost blown up, and very nearly experimented upon! And you, O great almighty know-it-all, have told me NOTHING! What are we here for? Tell me!"

"Not now," Yukari muttered, desperation creeping into her voice. "Any other time, maybe later, but not now."

"YES now!" Suddenly stricken, Sanae backed away from Yukari. She screwed her face in disgusted disbelief. "You think we're pawns. Don't you? You, with your ultimate power, and your mind games, and the collected wisdom of countless millennia behind you!"

"How rude—I'm seventeen," Yukari retorted tartly.

"And how long have you been seventeen?" Sanae snapped. She glowered; anger flamed on her tongue, swelling her breast with burning strength. "You've used and abused us all with your fancy power. Now look at you! Powerless, forced to crawl like a baby, a snake, a worm." Metaphors muddled in her mouth. She went on: "You couldn't get a fake shrine maiden to do your dirty work, so you settled for me. Even Reimu—"

Yukari shushed her, but Sanae refused to be shushed. The shrine maiden raised her hands for a fight, poisonous green light glowing in her fingertips...

Yukari said nothing. She merely pointed. And Sanae had to look.

The sickly green glow illuminated a silhouette crouched by the arch. The glint of a gun, aimed at them.

An earsplitting explosion rang in the dark—the report of a pistol. White light sparked from the muzzle.

Sanae realized what a real bullet felt like when a streamlined supersonic metal pellet whizzed by her head, grazing her ear.

Grinning, the gun-toting figure rose from her folding chair.

"Dammit, you moved," she said, pouting. The pistol remained trained on the intruders, and Sanae's breath remained caught in her throat like a chicken bone; Yukari showed no sign of alarm, not even the vaguest interest.

"All right," said the gunner, "let's get a better look at you." She craned her head and called, "Computer! Lights, please!"

Nothing happened.

Sanae shuffled her feet.

The gunner groaned. "This happens sometimes," she said, voice cracking. And again, louder: "_Computer!_ _Lights...please!_"

"YES, YES, GETTING TO THAT. STATE YOUR INDENTIFICATION ALREADY."

"You know my name!" the gunner shot back.

If an automated computer voice could sigh, this one just did. "HUMOR ME."

"Fine." The gunner cleared her throat. "Chiyuri Kitashirakawa, assistant professor of applied theoretical physics. Code: Pascal, Newton, Descartes, Bacon, Mendeleev. Code: Get on with it. Savvy?"  
"OH, YOU. LIGHTS, ON THE WAY."

The full moon blinked on, high in the sky, and bathed the meadow in silver light.

Chiyuri, the gunner, was considerably smaller than Sanae expected. A teenager, if she could guess—short, loud, unbearably perky. Her white sailor suit fit too snug, although the knot in the blue neckerchief hung loose; her bright yellow eyes matched her hair; as an accessory, her ugly gray gun clashed horribly with the rest of her getup.

"Are you...a high school student?" Sanae hazarded.

Chiyuri frowned, jutting out her lower lip. "No, doofus! I'm a college professor! Weren't you listening?"

"Assistant professor," Yukari corrected, smiling. "Where can we find the head of your department? For I much desire to speak with her."

"Not here," Chiyuri snorted. She waved her gun. "Hands where I can't see them. Don't wanna get night-blinded by any bursts of brilliant bullets, now, do we?"

Yukari obliged, and so did Sanae.

"So tell us about this place," Yukari said, as casually as she could muster with her hands behind her head.

Chiyuri sniggered. "What's this you're blabbering? You've been here dozens of times! You might even know half as much as I do about the Probability Space Hyper—" She stopped as she noted Sanae. "Oh, I get it, it's for the newbie. Hi, newbie."

"Hi," Sanae replied, watching the gun with nervous attentiveness. "What's the Probability Space Hyper-whatsit?"

Chiyuri sighed. "Oh, you're one of _those_. That's 'Probability Space Hypervessel.' Back to the beginning we go...

"There's the world, right? Ignoring the heaps of pompous philosophers who say there isn't, assume there's a world. It's like...a dinner plate, with all sorts of food on it. Mashed potatoes, chicken bits, broccoli. On second thought, skip the broccoli. All right, you got that? Good. Now assume there's another plate, except it's got fish and rice and ginger slices on it. That's another world, same table as this one, but totally separate. The plates don't overlap. Granted, there might be plates in other places we haven't thought of, like on the floor or stuck to the ceiling, but since we can't get to those, we don't worry about 'em. So! Using, eh...using special chopsticks, we can scrape food from one plate to another. Tilts the plate a little, but if we're careful, nothing spills. We'd never move the whole plate, not without breaking one or both, but skim a few bits off the top. Just enough not to spoil the taste of the meal. And then—"

Chiyuri's stomach gurgled. "Sorry," she mumbled, "I haven't had my lunch break."

Sanae summarized, "So, the Probability Space Hyperion...it's like an Interdimensional Passenger Ship?"  
"Yup!" Chiyuri nodded. "Yup, yup! Thing is, we don't normally take passengers, 'cause there's no telling where we'll end up. To boldly go where none have gone before, and all that drivel. Possibility of annihilation in transit. Problem is, Doc got her Improbability Drive secondhand, a tad dented, but still functional. Probably. It gets us places, good enough. After a couple tries."

"So you're saying," Sanae said, "you can take things—or people—out of one world, and into another?"

"That's about it, yeah," Chiyuri agreed.

"Why didn't you just say so?"

Chiyuri laughed haughtily. "Silly girl! Dumb questions like that make you a problem student, and problem students have no chance at all of becoming professors."

"With some exceptions," Yukari said, grinning. The gleam in her eyes made Chiyuri squirm.

Sanae thought for a moment. "But then, why are you here? What in Genskyo could you possibly—" Then she saw Yukari's shaded smile, and the truth blinked on like the fake full moon. "Of course. The Ark. You're here to rescue a doomed world."

"That's the plan," Chiyuri said.

"But it's a terrible plan!" Sanae cried, wringing her hands. "Don't you realize what you're doing? Moving the citizens of Gensokyo to a world they don't understand, a world that won't understand them or accept them? It's madness! When the pond's draining, you don't fling fish onto the golf course!"

"Don't worry," Chiyuri said, "we'd only bring the best and the brightest."

"And richest," Yukari added.

Sanae spluttered, "Eugenics? That's worse! Who gave you the power to choose who lives and who dies?"

"Guns?" Chiyuri guessed.

"Nobody!" Sanae said, answering her own question. "Nobody should have to make that choice! How can you throw this world on the scrap heap? Sure, lately it's been hell—it's still my home, and I'll defend it to my dying breath!"

"That can be arranged," Chiyuri said, clicking her pistol.

Sanae wasn't finished. She turned to Yukari. "You," she said, sobering, "you knew about this?"

"I did," Yukari said simply. "I was part of the project from the beginning." She laughed at Sanae's dumbfounded expression. "Don't look at me like that. I know what I'm doing. I always act in the best interests of Gensokyo."

"Sure you do," Sanae spat. "Why polish brass on a sinking ship when you can nab all the gold and hop back to land filthy rich?"

"Someone's full of metaphors today," Yukari remarked, tittering. But she soon grew serious. "Sanae, be realistic. Without Reimu Hakurei, what do you think is holding this world together? Glue?" When Sanae couldn't answer, Yukari did for her. "Exactly. There's not much time left—there never is. We must be ready for The End."

Yawning, Chiyuri plunked back in her folding chair. "So do I get to shoot you aleady, or what?"

"Oh please," Yukari said sweetly, "don't let us detain you. Carry out your duties as you must."

"Rihgt," Chiyuri said, a mite suspicious of such complicity. She leveled the gun. "Good seeing you again, Yukari. Fluff up a comfy chair for me in the next world, after I—"

The moon blinked off. Darkness resumed.

"Now what?!" Chiyuri groaned. Hearing a noise, she tensed and fired—once over Yukari's shoulder, twice where Sanae would have been had she fled and not frozen in place. "Don't you DARE run away!" Chiyuri yelled, firing blindly. "I'll make you sorry you were ever—"

With a creak and a crack, a chunk of starry sky plied loose from the roof; it dropped and shattered in a shower of glittering black glass. A patch of bleak black nothing took its place in the heavens.

Chiyuri screamed, "The sky is falling!" She fired straight into the air, brandishing her folding chair as a blunt object. "Come and get me, whoever you are! Against the supernatural, science shall surely prevail! I'm not afraid of—"

Then a wrench conked her on the head. Chiyuri collapsed in a heap.

"Good gods, I thought she'd never shut up."

From above, a flashlight shone in Sanae's face. Once her eyes adjusted, the shrine maiden saw a sour-faced kappa descending on a billowing parachute.

"Nitori," said Yukari, tapping her foot. "You're late."

"I did my thing," the kappa snapped. "I'd like to see you try it! Crawling into an air vent with this blasted tortoiseshell on your back, then dismantling a hyper-advanced supercomputer from inside the database using only a rubber-insulated pipe wrench and a ball of yarn!"

Sanae gaped. "What in the..."

"Eh?" The kappa squinted at Sanae; as politely as possible, the shrine maiden edged away from this freaky fishy-smelling girl from the sky.

Nitori muttered, "Who the hell's this?"

"A friend," replied Yukari, terse and tense. "Our last answer."

Nitori scrutinized Sanae, leaning in close and lingering a moment too long. Finally she shrugged and turned away. "Forgot the question." She waddled over to the scattered shattered glass and pried the pistol from Chiyuri's fingers. The kappa held the gun afar off, wrinkling her nose. Finally, she stuffed the device into her shell. "I'm done here," Nitori said to Yukari. "You're on your own from here on out."

"As usual," Yukari sighed. She popped open her parasol. "Thanks for your help."

Nitori scoffed. "Spare me your thanks. Crazy old hag."

As Yukari strained a smile to restrain her rage, Nitori cracked a knowing grin at Sanae. "You're the one they've waited for, eh? Good luck. That's all I'm saying. Heheh."

And she waddled away without another word.

Sanae stared after her. Even as she began to beg an explanation for this inexplicable course of events, Yukari interrupted.

"It is time," Yukari said, with her usual worryingly calm smile. She indicated the arch, and the path that snaked into this false forever-night. "The good Doctor is expecting us."

Sanae no longer knew why she chose to follow. She just did.


	13. Stage 4-C: (The Dream World)

The mansion's double doors burst open, like a voracious monster spreading its jaws to feed.

"Great," Elly mumbled. She rolled over and rubbed her head. "NOW you've done it."

"Are you still here?!" Mokou said, but relaxed. A dim sense of foreboding permeated the Dream World. Mokou glared into the mansion's monstrous throat. Whatever lurked in there must be worse than an attention-deprived child with a boomerang-scythe.

"Has your mistress been summoned?" Kaguya asked Elly. The princess shuffled to stand beside Mokou, but with her chin pointed up to make her look taller and more of a stuffy snob.

Elly shot an odd look at Kaguya. "You don't get it, do you. I didn't call her. Nobody 'calls' Yuuka. She goes where she wants, where she feels she's needed. Don't ask _me _how that works. I just answer the door."

"I see," Kaguya murmured. But no one could possibly see into the churning darkness beyond the exquisitely engraved doorway. Life-sized B=black rose vines twined about the portal, beyond which lay darkness deeper than the void that filled the sky.

Mokou ground her teeth, bit her nails, chewed her tongue. She could _really _use a nicotine fix.

Then, in that dark doorway, a blob of brightness loomed and bloomed. A lily-white parasol, made of giant living flower petals, shone with faint light. And under it...

A grinning green-haired youkai, eyes glittering with the wisdom of millennia. Many millennia of blood and torment.

"Mistress!" Elly cried. Scrambling to her feet, she broke away from Mokou to stand at her mistress's side—or, as Mokou saw it, hide behind her skirts.

"Yuuka Kazami," said Kaguya, "what a wonderful pleasure to see you."

"Who's this creep again?" Mokou muttered; Kaguya shushed her.

Yuuka twirled her flower-petal parasol, tittering. "Visitors!" she exclaimed exuberantly. Then a harsh aside: "You should have told me we had guests, Elly."

Elly began, "Didn't want to upset y—" but finished, "Shorry, marshter, shupposhe I washn't shinking," due to Yuuka pinching her cheeks.

Yuuka beamed. "How true." Striding down the steps with florid grace, she turned her terrifying friendliness on her most unwelcome guests. "Trespassing upon my private residence, harassing my staff. Who do you think you are?"

Kaguya extended her arms in a gesture of formal complicity. "We are—"

"Hold it."

Mokou raised a hand to interrupt; Kaguya scowled. "I'll do the intros this time. You always get to." Whether out of apathy or morbid curiosity, Kaguya let her.

"I'm Fujiwara no Mokou—'sup—and that's Kaguya Houraisen, lunatic princess and unofficial president of the Closeted Sadists Society. Please welcome her, all the way from the faraway castle of Annoyingly Fake Innocence. Me, I'm just here. Believe it or not, 'cause I'm not so sure I do, to get here we drowned in a lake of blood we fell in through a door in a basement. And one more thing: I'd skin you alive with my teeth for a pinch of tobacco. How's that?"

Kaguya nodded, suitably impressed.

Yuuka laughed haughtily, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "Well, what characters!" She smiled at Elly. "Kill them."

Mokou protested, "Now wait just a—"

But the scythe was already in the air.

Actually, the spinning blade-on-a-stick glanced off the Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs, careered past Mokou (she calmly sidestepped), and skittered into the shadows.

Kaguya returned Yuuka's detestable smile.

"Like I said, I already tried that," Elly said. Not that anybody was listening.

Yuuka giggled. "So," she said, "you're not so weak as to be deterred by my puny gatekeeper."

Hurt flickered on Elly's face, mingled with grudging agreement. Sighing, she snatched up her scythe as it whirled back to her.

"I suppose," Yuuka said, "I'll have to send you away myself."

"We seek no quarrel with your ladyship!" Kaguya said quickly. "In truth, we seek out Mi—"

"Stuff it," Mokou said. "You say that every time. Won't work here either."

As Elly gave a wide berth, Yuuka tossed aside her parasol. It wilted instantly.

There rose a stirring from the gardens that lined the mansion.

"Forget what I said before," Elly said, her smile smug and ugly. "NOW you're in for it."

She was right.

Vines erupted from the flowerbeds, spraying topsoil. Woody stems—growing, groaning, groping—burst from the earth and lunged at Mokou and Kaguya.

"Wow," Kaguya said, though she didn't sound too impressed, "what incredible turgor pressure it must take to—"

"Get your head in the game, princess!" Mokou snapped.

Instinctively, Mokou torched the vengeful vegetation with a blast of flames. The nearest withered, but the rest kept crawling, an inexorable rush of roots and vines. Mokou took a step back—"They won't burn!" Then it struck her: _Duh. Wet wood doesn't burn, moron_. Scowling, she retreated another step. The plants were gaining ground.

A smirk curled up Yuuka's face. Elly attempted to imitate it.

"Hold on," said Kaguya, interrupting Mokou's fizzling blaze, "I can slow them." At her behest, time thickened around the vines, congealing like old blood. The writhing vines slowed, crawling like sluggish snakes, and finally froze. Finally.

"Nice," Mokou said—possibly the first and last compliment she'd give Kaguya. Then she toasted the creepers in a fiery inferno. The smoke stank of rank plants and boiled sap.

Something about the sight of flames devouring her enemies made Mokou want to laugh. She resisted the temptation. "Burn, burn," she crooned, and the fire obeyed. It gobbled the plants, its orange orange tongues sucking dry the stems then licking the husks till they curled, blackened, crumbled to dust. Fire was beautiful.

A woody tentacle wrapped around Mokou's ankle.

She started. The plants had crept on her! From behind—?

"Sorry," Kaguya said, rubbing her temples. "I...can't concentrate...on ALL of them!"

"Oh, that so?" Mokou said, wriggling and kicking against the encroaching vines. "Well, that's just—"

A branch slithered over her mouth, gagging her. Screaming obscenities, Mokou fought and bit but only filled her mouth with bark bits and sticky sap. Mokou focused fire in her hands, to no avail—the vines oozed slime that snuffed her flames.

While Mokou struggled, Kaguya retreated from the advancing plants. She beat them back with energy bullets, pounded them with the Yin-Yang Orbs until the vines were crushed to mush. But more sprang to take their place. Eventually Kaguya succumbed. The vines snagged her ankle and strung her up like a rabbit caught in a trap. She squealed—her kimono skirt flew up, flashing her flailing white legs.

Mokou would have sniggered, if the vines weren't constricting her breathing.

They wrapped around her chest, overlapping and interlacing, sliding and gliding, sliming her bare belly. Her arms and legs were bound tight. Bones cracked—ribs, spine. She was sure she'd died several times. She knew not to ask how things could get worse, because they did. A stray vine crawled up her pant leg. Others followed. The woody stems poked, prodded, probed. Rough bark scraping her skin, they explored her heels, her calves, her thighs...

While Yuuka _watched_.

Mokou gritted her teeth.

_Well...this sucks. How did I get into this mess? Let's take a look. I went from carousing with my immortal enemy, to getting violated by trees. __And still __utterly unable to kill myself. Joy. Now what? Wait and see what that sick bitch down there is gonna do next. Test the limits of __our immortality, oh boy here we go again. Flay __us__? Chop us up? Feed us to her pet __plants__? Dull, done it __all __before. Feed us to each other? Ugh, haven't tried that yet, not looking forward to it. Look at her, standing and gawking, as she makes up her mind how to torture us. Here I am, strung up like a __dancing __meat puppet, providing __nightmarish __horrors for a lonely old lady who will undoubtedly pleasure herself over them later. Or, better yet, get that smarmy ass-kisser to do it for her. Ugh. That's it. I've had it: no more questing for me. First chance I get, it's back to the woods. Soon as I_...

"Mokou," mumbled the upside-down bundle once known as Kaguya, "mm..."

Mokou rolled her eyes.

Shut up. Just shut up.

Kaguya screamed and struggled, surprisingly unladylike. Mokou couldn't turn her head to see what was happening, but she could guess, and was quite pleased to do so. As for Mokou, in shame and suffering she retained her stubborn inborn dignity, something Kaguya had faked her entire life.

But they both had bigger things to worry about.

Yuuka was growing bored.

"Elly."

Nodding off, the guard now snapped to attention. "Yes boss?"

"What should I do with these...vagrants?" Yuuka tapped her chin thoughtfully.

Elly's forehead crinkled. "Them? Oh, uh...I dunno. Flay 'em, I guess? Chop 'em up? Ooh, I know! Or maybe you could feed 'em to the plants!"

Yuuka laughed and tousled Elly's hair. "Such a small imagination. You're so cute." She turned to the ensnared Mokou and Kaguya. "Oh vagrants, can you hear me? Scream if you can hear me." There came a short shriek from Mokou's right, but nothing more. It made Yuuka laugh.

"Scream all you like, it's not like I can hear you anyway. Anyway...I've picked a fitting punishment for you. Isn't that exciting? Are you ready? Get ready." She cleared her throat. "You'll be chopped into pieces, chewed thoroughly, and swallowed by my Giant Pitcher Plants, in which you'll be slowly digested over a thousand years." She grinned. "Sounds fantastic, right? Scream if you agree." Another silent scream. "Just kidding," she said sweetly.

Yuuka sighed and stretched. "Pity we can't play longer. The gardenias need pruning, and frankly, I'm tired from all this playing with new toys."

Out of the carpet of vines that writhed on the black ground, there sprang sunflowers whose heads swelled to the size of houses. The stems bowed under the weight of the flowers. Bent toward Mokou. Close enough for her to see the teeth sprouting from their heads, the rows and rings of jagged gnashing razor-sharp fangs. Next, the pitcher plants—hideous bulging sacs burst from the earth, belching the stench of sickly-sweet syrup and digestive fluids. Weak acids. All the better to savor the slow, slow pain.

Mokou wriggled, pushing herself up over the root that smothered her mouth. She gasped a breath. "You don't scare me," she snapped, voice even as she could manage. In response, the fanged flowers _hissed _at her.

"I cannot kill you," Yuuka said, "but I can do worse. Leave you alive, clinging on the cusp of consciousness, your brain dying and reviving every instant. Every instant, dying and reviving. For the rest of time."

Mokou spat. She was ready for the end.

Then she saw it: a glint, the sheen of a blade in the dark. Behind Yuuka and Elly, a human shape materialized out of shadows. A person, a passenger from a portal to yet another world. It looked at her, knowingly.

Mokou's eyes widened.

Skirts swirling, the shadow slipped behind Yuuka.

Yuuka misread the wonder on her face as fear. "What? Don't tell me, after all your years..."

The blade raised...

"...you're still afraid of death?"

And...

Swung. And missed.

Yuuka dodged, immediately producing another flower-petal parasol, which she pointed it at her assailant. Spikes and spines sprouted from the spokes, dripping venom.

"Why hello," Yuuka said, with poisonous pleasantness. "Didn't catch your name on the way in. No, no—don't speak. I refuse to duel or deal with clumsy assassins." She rested a hand on Elly and shoved HER toward the shadowy figure. "Good luck, Elly."

Elly stumbled toward her opponent, but quickly braced herself. She put on a fierce battle snarl. "Back off, bitch! I have a scythe, and I know how to use it!"

There was a strange strained silence.

"A scythe?" The shadow chuckled. "You call that THING...a scythe?"

There was a _swish_. The crescent blade of Elly's scythe dropped off—the stick shivered into splinters. The head fell with a _plunk_.

The other scythe was larger and longer, livelier and lovelier. It gleamed with dark light. "Honestly," the shadow sighed, "posers like you make my job much more difficult than it needs to be."

She slashed again. Elly cringed...but the target wasn't her.

Mokou felt the tangle of plants around her stop and stiffen. They clung to her frame, dry and brown and withered. She grinned. "Finally." Mokou ripped free of her brittle bonds and doused the vicious vegetation with a dose of fiery blaze.

Yuuka's green minions burned magnificently: pitcher plants deflating, sunflowers drooping, all things clenching, blackening. The sight made Mokou smile.

"Eeeee!"

The sound made Mokou smile more.

"At least wait until I'm out, idiot!"

Kaguya crawled from the bonfire, somewhat singed and majorly mussed, and stalked toward Mokou, fuming. "Listen, you insolent..." Suddenly she froze, forgetting her rage. She pointed past Mokou. "Who is THAT?"

The fire cast dim glow on their savior: a tall girl sporting majestic magenta ponytails, with a bright blue dress and a wicked scythe. Her gaze was like a fresh corpse, dead but still warm. "Komachi Onozuka, ferryman of the river of the dead," she said with a bow, "at your service."

Kaguya Houraisen and Fujiwara no Mokou, two immortals in the presence of a reaper, clung to one another like terrified children.

"A r-r-reaper!" Kaguya cried.

"S-s-stay calm!" Mokou said, smiling shakily, since she was shaking worse.

Komachi smiled back. "No, no, no. I'm not exactly a reaper—I get that all the time. Think of me as a posthumous taxi service." She sized up the duo, both so dirty and disheveled and determined to avoid eye contact. "So you're the two true immortals. Glad to meet you. I thought I'd never get to."

"A-hem."

Yuuka tapped her foot expectantly. Elly hovered uncertainly.

"I'm getting to you," Komachi said, pointing with her scythe. She glanced back at Mokou and Kaguya. "You must be wondering how I found you. The truth's quite boring, as it often can be. Yesterday morning I collected the samurai. Out of curiosity, I tracked her killers to the ruins of Scarlet Devil Mansion, where I put that poor vampire out of her misery. It was nearly sunset." She motioned behind her. "I'm here to get you out of here. Go, now. I've left the portal open. Don't worry, I won't be long. I'll take care of HER—you go on ahead."

"You have our undying gratitude," Kaguya said breathlessly, collecting herself and cheerfully edging away. "Now if you will excuse us we must be—"

"Hell no." Mokou hooked her arm in Kaguya's elbow and yanked the princess close. She glared at Komachi. "We're staying. It's stupid to have you clean up our mess."

Komachi paused, but shrugged. "Whatever. Suit yourself." She turned to Yuuka. "How do you like that? Almost a fair fight: three against two. Well, one and a half." Elly quavered.

Yuuka chuckled. "So it is. I'm afraid I'll have to pass." She raised her hands and hung her head. "You got me. I give up. Do whatever you want to the girl—" she nudged Elly—"but leave me alone."

"Don't think you'll get off that easily," Mokou growled. "YOU attacked US! What the hell kind of a greeting is that?"

Yuuka shrugged, somehow supercilious even in surrender. "It's my property. I can and will do as I please." She indulged in a horrid grin. "And I like to tease."

"Tease?" Mokou cried. "You sick sadistic witch! Remind me again what part was teasing, the chopping to bits or the digesting for a thousand years!"

"You forgot the chewing."

"STOP," Komachi boomed. And at the voice of the reaper, they did. Now that she had an attentive audience, Komachi could relax; she leaned her scythe back on her shoulder. "I hate to admit it, but she's right. This IS her property. Her house, her rules. No matter how stupid."

"Of course," Kaguya said quickly. She tugged on her arm, but Mokou held fast. "Good thing we were _just leaving_."

"Of course," Yuuka repeated, smile broadening. "Don't let us detain you." For one last spiteful bite, she added, "Besides, I haven't even heard of this _Mima_. Whoever she is, she can't reach me here. Not here, not ever."

"I never told you her name," Mokou growled.

Yuuka looked unbothered. "Oh, was that it? Lucky guess."

Mokou clenched her fists, till her nails dug into her palms. Yuuka knew more than she told. However, Mokou knew she must resist the urge to roast this twisted flower girl alive.

Komachi sidled to stand between the immortals. "Come with me," she said, beckoning. "Grab hold." As Mokou and Kaguya reluctantly pinched the reaper's sleeves, Komachi slashed a bleeding red gash in space and time. She hauled them inside.

Yuuka waved farewell; Elly mimicked her mistress down to the lurid leer.

Limbo space swallowed the three travelers—red, red, red everywhere. It hurt the eyes to stare too long.

"All right," Komachi said, unflinching, "where do we go from here?"

"Home," Mokou said immediately. "Away from all this excitement and adventure. It's horrible. I want my life back."

"No." Kaguya pulled on the reaper's sleeve. "No, we cannot go back, not now. Mokou, how can you be so careless? Soon there will no longer be a place to go back to!"

"Not my problem," said Mokou.

"The world will be annihilated!"

"Then I don't want to know about it. That way I won't have wasted my last hours stressing about something I can't be bothered to stop."

"You have a DUTY to Gensokyo!"

"I have a shady spot by a stream. Your move."

"You never—"

With a cry of frustration, Komachi slammed their heads together. Mokou and Kaguya staggered, dazed. "IF YOU CAN'T CHOOSE," Komachi roared, in her booming reaper-voice, "I'LL DO IT FOR YOU, AND YOU WON'T LIKE IT!"

Suddenly they were pale and timorous. Looking at their ridiculous faces, Komachi broke down and laughed. When she'd gotten her breath back, she said, "All right, we'll go to hell."

They must have gone pale again—she spluttered into more laughter.

Kaguya mumbled, "That was...where we were...planning to go in the first place."

"Yeah," Mokou muttered, "the vampire said..."

"Aha!" Komachi scratched the nape of her neck with the tip of the scythe. "She told you that THIS was a portal to hell?" The immortals nodded glumly; the reaper laughed again.

"It's not, you might have guessed," she said. "She might have thought it would be, for you. Yuuka's famous for her nasty breed of hospitality. Looks like Kurumi lied to you through her big pointy teeth." A grim grin split Komachi's face. "How would you like to see the _real _hell?"

The immortals paused. Komachi added, "It's on the way to Mima's."

Mokou looked at Kaguya, and Kaguya at Mokou. They both looked at Komachi.

"We'd like to go ho—"

"Take us to Mima," Kaguya finished, faster than Mokou. "We have a score to settle."

While Mokou raged at Kaguya, Komachi scratched her head. "You sure? The way I know isn't easy, otherwise you wouldn't be the only ones there, trust me."

"We do trust you," Kaguya said, which incited more baffled babbling from Mokou. "That's why you're going to take us there."

Komachi laughed once again. "Right this way."

With a swing of her scythe, she sliced another gash in time and space, then stood aside to let the others enter first.

And so the immortals passed into the land of the damned, with the ferryman of the dead following close behind.

* * *

**A/N: **_Whoa, _Evil Dead_ moment._

_One long, weird chapter later, they're finally on their merry way to hell! Glorious._

_Next chapter: Discover the ultimate secret of Gensokyo, even if like our intrepid heroines you really would rather not..._


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